To Kill A Mockingbird Empathy Quotes

Imagine living in a society that had no empathy for individuals that have become outcasts. Where the individuals suffer the characterization and effects of the society because they lack empathy for how they live. A society that has a unwritten rule but can not apply the rule to the individuals that apply. This society is in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird is told from the perspective of a young girl, Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, who lives in a quiet town in Maycomb, Alabama. Growing up in Maycomb, Scout and her brother, Jem, entertain themselves by spying on their mysterious and elusive neighbor Boo Radley. Maycomb is a sleepy town until their father, Atticus a respected man and lawyer, defends a black man accused of

Underwood uses the analogy of Tom’s death to the slaughter of songbirds. When Mr. Underwood learned that Tom Robinson was shot seventeen times when trying to escape jail, he believed that it was a sin. After Tom’s death Mr. Underwood writes a passage in the paper about how he feels about it:“Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children”(323). Mr. Underwood writes a passage in the paper that the society thinks foolish. Mr. Underwood demonstrates empathy when he expresses his views that it is a sin to kill a cripple, and further shows the lack of empathy in the society when they react to Tom’s death as something typical; just another black man running away. Mr. Underwood disagreed and feels so strongly about Tom’s death that he compares it to that of a songbird. Lee uses the line “He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” to show the reader the resemblance between Tom and mockingbird, and how both deaths are a sin. This shows that like the Mockingbird, Tom is an individual in society, and how society affects on individuals are

Tate and Atticus’ discussing what happened to Scout and Jem the night they came back from the high school. In the beginning Atticus thought that Jem was the one who killed Mr. Ewell when he attacked them, but Mr.Tate explained that it was not Jem, that it was Boo Radley. On the front porch after the attack Mr. Tate tells Atticus what he thinks about bringing what happened to court and the town: “‘To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with this shy ways into the limelight--to me, that’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head’”(369-370). Lee uses the word “sin” as a way to connect Boo to a mockingbird. Mr. Ewell describes to Atticus that to him it is a “sin” to bring a shy man who does good out of the shadows that the society has forced him to go into. Boo Radley has been an individual in the society for as long as anyone can remember and bring someone who has been characterized as a boogeyman into the society that has given him that name is wrong. Scout uses the rule that Atticus taught her about the Mockingbird to show Atticus that presenting Boo to the society is wrong. After Mr. Tate explains to Atticus the moral principles of the matter of bringing Boo into the light Atticus puts aside his views and thinks about his mockingbird. Seeing her father's discomfort Scout assures him