To Kill A Mockingbird Book Report

To kill a mockingbird, was an unheard phrase to me until I read this book. When it's first mentioned, it’s said by Atticus in his old, wise way “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” (Lee, 90), the reasoning why is later explained by Miss Maudie “ Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people gardens, they don’t nest in corncribs, the don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” (Lee, 90). Now, when I first read this I just thought this was some cheesy way to add the title into the book, like how Will Smith said suicide squad in the movie “Suicide Squad” but I quickly let that pass me by. This seems like a bit of a throwaway phrase

After the tragic death of Tom, he is mentioned in the The Maycomb Tribune “He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children…” (Lee, 241)This isn’t a very big dig into the reference, but it’s still there. In the book, Tom is described as a charitable soul who would never try hurt anyone, and he was eventually killed. However, I don’t believe he was truly killed when he was shot, no, it was most certainly before then. Tom’s attempted escape reassures the people of Maycomb that when it comes down to it, a black man will still return to their “ways”, trying to run from authority. When Tom truly died, when he cracked, when he began his escape, he was no longer Tom, he was the stereotype that he was always significantly far from, the part of him that was respectable, died. Tom was killed by Maycomb’s legal system, not through a gun, but by putting him in a desperate situation, he either needed to take charge, or suffer. The truly sad thing being that, in life or death situations, mockingbirds don’t survive and when he took charge and tried to save himself, the mockingbird in him

The light-hearted aspects of early childhood are typically something that become lost to time, though in some cases this simplicity can be ripped away from children when traumatic events occur, like the ones caused by Bob Ewell’s actions. Before the trial even existed in Jem and Scouts lives, their days ran smoothly, but when the Tom Robinson case came, days began to be much more complex. When the news of Atticus being Tom’s lawyer spread, bullying became more prevalent in the school lives of the children. Harassment of their father became a typical thing, and most of the time, Scout had no clue why. When the time came that Tom’s alleged actions were revealed to Scout, a new world of crime and sins was exposed to her, rape, in this case, which should never be something exposed to a child in full, complete detail as it was in the trial. Instead of Scout enjoying her days of blind innocence to the evils that lurk in our world, she had to face them, and accept that her father could potentially be protecting someone who could have committed a vile crime. Not only was Scout exposed to sins like rape, she had to confront what I would argue is an embodiment of malignance in this novel, when Bob Ewell attacked. Traumatic events are known to have deep, psychological effects on small children, and there is no