Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the 1930’s America. The main characters, Scout and Jem live in a world filled with racial bias and prejudice. While a major court trial is going on, Scout and Jem are trying to make sense of all that is happening, but they are pure children in a world filled with hateful people. Overall, Harper Lee includes a strong theme of innocence throughout her novel. This theme idea relates to the symbol of the book, the mockingbird, in the fact that, “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” so killing a mockingbird is destroying this overall idea of innocence. Which is displayed through the children as well as Tom Robinson and Arthur (Boo) Radley.
Throughout the novel Harper Lee hints at this theme with various quotes from many of the children in the novel. This theme is not only displayed in one section of the novel but all sections and can even be thought of the most critical quotes from the novel. In chapter eleven there is a very powerful example of this overall ignorance. Before this section
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In chapter 21, Jem and the children return to the court as the jury is deliberating. Jem reveals his innocence by telling Reverend Sykes, “‘He’s not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won it,’ he said wisely. ‘Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard—’ ‘Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man . . .’ But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence.” Jem does not factor racial prejudice into the case and naively believes that the white jury will acquit Tom Robinson. Despite Reverend Sykes’ warnings about being overconfident, Jem remains adamant that Atticus will win the