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To Kill A Mockingbird Quote Analysis

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Humans are creatures of emotion, guided by their will and blessed with the capacity to have compassion. Their ability to understand others and share their pain, be flawed with vulnerability, and still choose to keep others close to them— these abilities, unique to us, are what have led the world to where it is today. Their fragility is what connects them, and yet it is a human’s greatest weakness. Harper Lee’s prestigious novel To Kill A Mockingbird, based in the 1930s, displays the shortcomings of society and how they have fed into their faults. Biased perceptions of others based on nothing had plagued their ability to see each other as humans and led to the persecuted Tom Robinson having the value of his life unfairly questioned. The world …show more content…

In To Kill a Mockingbird, lawyer and father Atticus Finch is a bright example of what human empathy can achieve, when he risked his reputation and career to defend the falsely accused Tom Robinson. He argues several powerful points in his closing statements: “You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women– black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and not to any particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and no man is living who has never looked upon a woman without desire'” (Lee 204). Atticus is a representation of the growth that society has made and how much deeper our understanding of each other has become. However, the great amount of prejudice overwhelms those who are moral. The severity of this problem cannot be overlooked, whether progress is being made or not. The beginning of Atticus’s entire case and the harassment of Tom Robinson was based purely on prejudice: “The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took

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599 Words | 3 Pages

In his closing speech to the jury Atticus expressed his perspective on Tom Robinson’s case and the prejudice against all black people. He explains to the jury “... some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men…” (Lee, page 204). He believes all people make mistakes, everyone is human, and that no race is superior than another because of skin colour.

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762 Words | 4 Pages

In society today there are those that are pushed out of the crowd because of what they look like, how they act, and what others say to be true about them. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows that unselfish, kind hearted people can experience prejudice from others. Always wanting to be the better person, Atticus Finch is like the mockingbird when taking the responsibility of defending Tom Robinson, who is a black man. Once Atticus gets the news that he will be defending Tom Robinson, who is accused of rape, he is very stressed until the end of the trial. Harper Lee shows this when she says, “It’s this Tom Robinson case that’s worrying him to death...”

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458 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee conveys that prejudice divides communities and that persecution of innocent people is evil; furthermore; these two minor themes reinforce the major thematic idea that a simple assumption can divide people. When Tom Robinson is put on trial for supposedly raped Mayella Ewell, the racism in Maycomb surfaces and creates conflict. In the novel, a stranger says, “You know what we want,” ‘another man said.’ “Get aside from the door, Mr. Finch.”(172). Some drunken men want to harm Tom Robinson for the wrong that he did.

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500 Words | 2 Pages

The central idea of To Kill A Mockingbird is Bravery. A quote used in the story that Harper Lee uses to show this central idea is “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view” (30/34). This quote shows how some people can be brave. Many of the characters in the story were brave but the three i'm going to focus on are Atticus, Jem, and Arthur also known as “Boo”. Atticus, the father of Jem and Scout was very brave throughout the story.

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762 Words | 4 Pages

By defending Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus demonstrates that morality overlooks social prejudices. Atticus defends Tom Robinson in spite of the criticism and opposition he and his children encounter from society. His awareness that a person's color should not determine their behavior shows that he sees African Americans as having the same values as white people. It may seem like Atticus is only defending Tom Robinson because of his sense of duty, but he is also doing it because he exhibits morality by overlooking prejudices and understands how all people deserve justice, no matter what race they are.

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1271 Words | 6 Pages

History would be made by a woman named Sarah Breedlove who would soon be known as Madame CJ Walker. Madame CJ Walker was born Sarah Breedlove or On December 23, 1867. Sarah Breedlove was born to Minerva and Owen Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana and was the youngest girl out of six children. She had one sister and four brothers. Between the age of six and seven Sarah became an orphan because her parents had passed away from yellow fever.

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548 Words | 3 Pages

Scout, in the beginning, dramatizes her life occurrences while being naive towards realistic issues such as racism. From the near beginning, page 16, “Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained – if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off.” As shown in the excerpt, scout believed in childish tall-tales and rumors at the start of the story. She did not notice, or care, how dramatized these rumors were. Another example from pages 20 and 21, “Jem was careful to explain that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not to approach him with requests to reenact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, to embarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behind him at noon.”

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428 Words | 2 Pages

Scout could be considered a metaphorical “mockingbird” in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee because of her innocence and her joyful attitude that stays amidst all of the imperfect encounters she has in the book. For example, when Scout is talking with Dill they are discussing the childhood mystery of where babies come from when Dill suggests you order them from a man who rows them across an island and Scout opposes, “That’s a lie. Aunty said God drops ‘em down the chimney. At least that’s what I think she said.” This shows how creative and naive Scout’s mind is because she either believed Aunt Alexandra’s story or, because she had a tendency to “mishear” what people say, she could’ve made it up all on her own.

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Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that has grown so much in popularity that Harper Lee has sold 40 million copies worldwide (Foca and Fine). Tom Robinson, a black man, went through so many struggles just because of the color of his skin which helped the world open its blind eye to racism. Tom Robinson, one of the mockingbirds of the story, has developed a narrative story of his life through the trial that led to his death. Tom Robinson was a character who was bold, and kind-hearted, his life should have never been taken from him; the world could learn from his story. In Harper Lee’s

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506 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird the author Harper Lee uses protagonist to express the idea that having the courage to fight can make people hate you. The thesis means that Atticus is fighting for other that is something that others will not do at all. This also means that Atticus was fighting for someone who is a colored and people did not like what he was doing. Next is that Atticus was standing up for Tom Robinson from getting accused of what he didn’t do. He also let Calpurnia stay at his house because he needed her and Alexandra told him to fire Calpurnia.

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374 Words | 2 Pages

Even with minimal effort, compassion can be something that everyone practices frequently. Despite the friendly society in which humankind lives, the existence of a few hateful outliers cannot be denied. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Mayella Ewell, a white woman, falsely accuses Tom Robinson, a black man, of raping her. Considering the setting, it was commonplace for there to be heavy discrimination directed toward black and mixed individuals, especially when dealing with the law. In the face of hate and lies, Tom Robinson’s lawyer, Atticus Finch, musters up an outstanding argument to prove Tom’s innocence, but in reality, the case was over before it began; racism won out in the end, and the jury proved Tom Robinson guilty of raping

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1054 Words | 5 Pages

Lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird “Life is a matter of what you learn and how you learn it”. To me, this quote means that people would learn many different lessons from life experiences. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee taught me as well as the characters in the novel a lot about morals from their learned experiences. In To Kill a Mockingbird, there are many characters who learned some important lessons from their experiences of life. One example is the narrator,Scout.

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693 Words | 3 Pages

Atticus Finch was a lawyer that had to be exploitive if he wanted to win cases. When he gave a closing argument for the case of Tom Robinson, he had to find a way to persuade his audience. Instead of making his speech specifically about Tom Robinson, Atticus stated that some people of a race may lie, but that is true for all humans, no matter what the color of their skin is. Atticus said that, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” (Lee, 30). He believed that you shouldn’t judge someone’s actions until

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1000 Words | 4 Pages

Biological or chemical attacks are deliberate releases of germs or any other biological substances that can make a person sick or kill them. Deliberate attacks are not just a United States problem, attacks can happen anywhere on Earth at any time. The CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR) deals with the nation’s health security with any threats that may harm the United States and worldwide. Inside the OPHPR there is a department called the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) they work along with other government agencies like Homeland Security to protect the United States from deliberate attacks. The EOC uses a system very similar to the PSHA emergency incident command system that has a common response system, emergency

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775 Words | 4 Pages

Lola Leonard Mrs.Erdmann English 9 4/21 “To Kill A Mockingbird” Harper Lee uses the quote: “Storms make trees grow deeper roots” This applies to a person because in life people make mistakes, but the good thing is everyone has time and room to grow. Lee references this all throughout her novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Jem and Scout, the kids in the story, grow and become more mature: Also, learning many life lessons along the way. Harper Lee uses a combination of imagery, tone, and, symbolism throughout her book: "To Kill A Mockingbird" to show the idea that being polite and respectful plays a big part in maturing

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