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To Kill A Mockingbird Innocence Quotes

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The Fall of Innocence To Kill a Mockingbird is a book of progression and important themes that are still in use today. Throughout the book, we see the fight between the lower-class and upper-class citizens. We even see lower-class citizens turn to other people considered lower-class. As explained by Jem, the town is split up into four classes, the ordinary upper-middle class, the poor who make an effort, the poor who make no effort, and citizens who are black. If you try to bring yourself above or act above that class, you are ridiculed and shunned for it. In chapter 19 of the novel, Tom Rombison explains, “I felt right sorry for her [...]”(Lee 224). Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling. The witness realized his mistake and shifted …show more content…

Children know where they and their families stand at a young age and others rebel and make the people “lower” than them feel bad. This is something that is still very common today and makes reading To Kill a Mockingbird important so we can see the change we need. In Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, we are informed that social inequality leads to the loss of innocence and disorder in society, we are shown the loss of innocence through Mr. Raymond, and the internal thoughts of Scout, especially shown in her relationship with Walter, and we see both destruction and the loss of innocence in the trail with Tom Robinson. Mr. Doulphus Raymond is not the main character in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, but he and his family are the precise examples of the loss of innocence because of social inequality. During the period Scout was narrating the book, Doulphus was known as the town drunk. Scout wonders how he could be drunk when he does not look like …show more content…

The people in the mob try to attack Tom Robinson, but the people who go to attack him are from the lower class, making it seem like they are just trying to make themselves feel better about themselves. “Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know—doesn't say much to them, does it?”(Lee 97). Atticus explains this quote to Scout, in chapter 16, trying to explain why Mr. Cunningham was in the mob. Atticus is trying to explain that when in a mob you act differently than you normally would and even though Mr. Cunningham is trying to raise himself on the social tier by harming those below him it does not necessarily mean he is completely in the wrong. At the end of the day, most are trying to move up in social status and they do not care in those moments who get hurt. Due to social classes and social disparity, innocence gets ruined, and disorder spreads through the town, as we see in Doulpas Rayman, Scout and Walter, and the Tom Robinson trial. Doulphus Raymond is seen being shamed for how he lives and for the societal class his family now shares, and in the act loses his

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965 Words | 4 Pages

Harper Lee is a very famous Author who wrote the book to kill a Mockingbird. The title of the book mean to kill innocence because a Mockingbird is a symbol of innocence. The book takes place during the Great Depression in Maycomb Alabama. In her novel to kill a Mockingbird lee uses Tom, Atticus, Boo Radley as the human embodiment of the Mockingbird.

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472 Words | 2 Pages

“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”(page 119) In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the mockingbird is one of the most symbolic objects in the novel. It represents the innocence of someone not affected by the evilness of society. In the novel, there are three people, or mockingbirds, that are innocent affected by society.

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1099 Words | 5 Pages

Sometimes a man or a woman has to put aside their own needs and desires to help a person in great need, even if it isn’t want others say is right or is to their morals wrong. In To Kill a Mockingbird a middle aged lawyer named Atticus was forced to make this decision for a young black man named Tom Robinson who was framed of a crime he didn’t commit. Raping a young white woman. It made perfect sense why the lawyer went out of his way to help the innocent man.

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432 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the idea of innocence is said in the most wises quote “it is a sin to kill a mockingbird”. Lee develops the idea of the point of view and symbolism throughout the novel. Throughout the novel, Scout is portrayed as innocent, since it is told by Atticus, a child, meaning that scout won't be able to fully understand all the racism happening in Maycomb. Scout won't have a fully understandable meaning of all the bigotry until after the trial, she finally realizes after Tom Robinson's trial and sees how unfair all this is.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

To Kill a Mocking Bird is told from the perspective of a little girl named Scout. She lives with her father Atticus, her brother Jem and their maid Calpurnia. In her novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee foreshadows a loss of innocence through the symbolic significance of a snowman, fire and camellia flowers. To begin, the symbolism of the snowman foreshadows the trial and how they converse when constructing it. “Jem, I ain’t never heard of a nigger snowman”, I said.

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902 Words | 4 Pages

When looking at a story, a child can often reveal oversights that an adult can not. Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, uses her characters of Scout, Miss. Caroline, Calpurnia, and Mr. Dolphus Raymond to highlight an outside view of adult community through Scout’s narration. In the book, Scout encounters three situations where her child perspective shapes how the reader understands and interprets these adult situations: Calpurnia’s change in demeanour when at the Negro church, Miss.

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839 Words | 4 Pages

In Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, two characters change because of experiences they witness first hand. These characters, Scout and Jem, morally developed throughout the story by watching what happens with Tom Robinson’s trial, and by watching their father face the discrimination and hate because of the trial. Jem is a kind, young boy. He sees the world as a little kid would. Jem was bewildered when his dad, Atticus, shot and killed a dog in one shot.

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1331 Words | 6 Pages

In a prejudiced southern town, a book's perceivable focus on oppression makes an immense narrative of innocence being surrendered to empathy and where characters met with injustice courageously choose to fight for societal progress. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, is set in the 1930s deep in the South. The town is controlled by social injustices and predicts actions. As the novel unfolds, the necessity of change for social advancement becomes evident, often at the cost of one's innocence. Though the novel appears to focus on the oppressive nature of a prejudiced Southern town, its deeper message lies in the inevitable loss of innocence required for social progress.

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1078 Words | 5 Pages

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” Atticus warned Jem. This is the book's central quote, the story's moral, and the metaphor the book is named after. In the metaphor, the mockingbird represents innocence and purity, for mockingbirds only serenade and bring happiness to the people around them. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to kill something so helplessly innocent and pure. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley are all metaphorically portrayed as mockingbirds because they stand for what’s morally correct when faced with a town full of injustice and prejudice.

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1253 Words | 6 Pages

By analyzing the struggle of these individuals throughout Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader observes that the prejudiced society hurts the mockingbirds; this is important because the author demonstrates it is a sin to harm an innocent being. To start, Mayella Ewell symbolizes a mockingbird that the discriminatory society misjudges as a result of her low social class. When Scout is in first grade, readers see that the Ewells are poor and struggle to survive. Atticus tells Scout, “the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” (Lee 40).

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726 Words | 3 Pages

While sitting in a section that white adults would not be caught dead in, Jem begins to understand the severity of the social standings. He takes to heart what he, earlier before the trial, had told his sister about Mr. Dolphus Raymond. Dolphus Raymond was so much of a social outlier that he took to being a false drunk to justify his actions. Although being a white man, Dolphus takes up living in the Black community, living with his African American wife and their mixed children. Jem, in response to Scout’s question about mixed children says, “Colored people won’t have ‘em [mixed children] because they’re half white; white folks won't have ‘em ‘cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere.

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2154 Words | 9 Pages

In literature, it is common for a mockingbird to symbolize innocence. It is a well known fact that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. The reason for this is because they do nothing of harm to anyone, and they provide an euphoric feeling in their songs. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, this characteristic is embodied through certain characters in the book during a time of prejudice and poverty.

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403 Words | 2 Pages

We all know the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” That saying can directly relate into To Kill a Mockingbird as a main theme. Mr. Dolphus Raymond is a perfect example of how we don’t understand somebody until we step into his or her shoes. Mr. Raymond was seen as the town drunk and was said to be an evil man (Lee 267). Scout also talks about how Atticus and Aunt Alexandra probably wouldn’t approve of the kids talking with Mr. Raymond.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

Jem said that “there’s four kinds of folks in the world. The ordinary kind like us and the neighbors… the Cunninghams… the Ewells… and the negroes.” This statement exemplifies the social stratification in the small town of Maycomb. Even very young children are able to distinguish and differentiate between classes. The book depicts “the negroes” as the very worst of the classes, and people like the Cunninghams, as among the highest class, the “whites.”

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1244 Words | 5 Pages

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee teaches us about the town of Maycomb County during the late 1930s, where the characters live in isolation and victimization. Through the perspective of a young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, readers will witness the prejudice that Maycomb produces during times where people face judgement through age, gender, skin colour, and class, their whole lives. Different types of prejudice are present throughout the story and each contribute to how events play out in the small town of Maycomb. Consequently, socially disabling the people who fall victim from living their life comfortably in peace. Boo Radley and his isolation from Maycomb County, the racial aspects of Tom Robinson, and the decision Atticus Finch makes as a lawyer, to defend a black man has all made them fall in the hands of Maycomb’s prejudice ways.

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