“Harper Lee wants to tell us that it takes courage NOT to kill a mockingbird.” “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” (p.119) Mockingbirds are presented as a symbol of innocence and bliss in this book. As this quotation lays it out, they don’t do anything negative or disturbing to anybody, but they sing and therefore they make music. In other words, Mockingbirds are harmless beings who live among us day after day in our villages and in our cities with a very discrete presence which manifests itself only occasionally and when it does manifest itself it is a harmonic expression that can please others. …show more content…
One of them, probably the main one is Arthur (Boo) Radley. Boo Radley was raised in a family which lived very withdrawn. They never went to church, never visited anyone and no one ever visited them. Except for a small period, where Boo started to hang out with some of the Cunningham boys and did a few rebellious things, he spent his whole life at home, sealed off from everyone with closed shutters and doors. Now you probably question yourself why a man like Boo Radley, cut off from society and living such an unusual life, should be considered as a Mockingbird. That is also what Scout and Jem didn’t understand until the end of the book when he saved their lives. They started making up all possible assumptions about him, certainly also influenced by their environment, until for them he was no more than a cat and squirrel eating monster that only comes out at night. But actually no one really knew, didn’t they? People make assumptions when someone’s different. A quotation that I found