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To Kill A Mockingbird Central Idea Analysis

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Recommended: Major themes of to kill a mockingbird

There is one central idea in to kill A Mockingbird, the central idea of the story is how others judged anyone different than them without having any information or reason for being prejudiced. The story shows this throughout the story as 2 different characters. The first character is Boo Radley the kids of Maycomb avoid him because they had heard bad stories of him. The way Maycomb treated Boo Radley leads up to how they treated Tom Robinson when he is accused of rape. In the town of Maycomb all of its citizens acted racist towards people of colored skin. The citizens of Maycomb weren’t evil or bad, but they had been raised in a way where they thought that being racist was publicly acceptable. “I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus …show more content…

Radley was like the black sheep of Maycomb. When Mr. Radley stopped going out the younger generation started rumors that would make others avoid him. People like Ms. Maudie knew Mr. Radley before he acted like he stopped socializing and she knew that he was not bad like everyone had thought he was. When Ms. Maudie’s house was on fire Jem and Scout had to go outside because of the fire Scout was alone, staring at the fire without a coat on and Mr. Radley had wrapped a blanket around her, she didn’t even know it was Mr. Radley that had given her the blanket. In the beginning of the story Mr. Radley had been putting different things in the tree that Scout and Jem would find. When Jem had lost his pants the night before he had tried to get them back before Atticus could ask where they went, but when Jem got to where he had lost them he had found that they had been fixed by Boo Radley.
The central idea of social injustice and how it affected Maycomb can be explained through the mockingbird. Jem, Scout, and all the other children in Maycomb are like the mockingbird in a way. A mockingbird symbolizes innocence and the title of the story is to kill A Mockingbird. The title means that the innocence in Maycomb is being corrupted by being prejudiced towards Mr. Robinson. “He’s nothin’ but a nigger-lover!” Francis says this and Scout gets angry with him, even though Scout doesn’t know what a “nigger-lover” is. Scout was symbolizing the mockingbird in this scene in the

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“Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a nigger-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb again. He’s ruinin’ the family, that’s what he’s doin’” (94), even Atticus’ family does not support his decision on taking the case. Atticus’ family shames him because they believe his case will cripple the family’s reputation and taint the family name. This reveals how racist people get when it involves black people, that if a white person has anything to do with a black person, they receive the nickname “nigger-lover”. Atticus and his family struggles with the racism as everyone talks about how personally involved Atticus is.

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