To Kill A Mockingbird Theme Essay

Mockingbird Theme Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is one of the most classic and well known pieces of literature in American history. Throughout the book, Harper Lee reveals many injustices, and through many events, depicts typical life in the South in the 1930s. The story is set in Maycomb, Alabama, and tells the story of Scout Finch. Scout undergoes many experiences that show her the true nature of human life. Harper Lee chooses these situations that Scout goes through very carefully. Using these, there are many underlying themes that Lee has weaved throughout the book. However, the most important and well shown theme is that people shouldn’t judge others positively or negatively based on first appearance and without knowing more

As the story progresses Scout gets older and as Scout faces every situation, the reader can see that she starts to understand more and more and starts to ask questions. One example is at the end of the book when her teacher Miss Gates talks to Scout about how America is so much better than Hitler’s Germany because it isn’t full of prejudice. This is hypocritical because earlier in the book Scout overhears Miss Gates talking about how “It’s time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves”(Lee, 283). This reflects the theme in 2 ways because firstly, on the outside Miss Gates seems to love democracy but actually is very prejudiced herself, also because Miss Gates herself has negative judgment towards African Americans only because of their skin and without understanding them. After this, Scout goes to ask Atticus and Jem about this hypocrisy. In earlier situations where this theme was also relevant, Scout had not questioned it, which shows Scout maturing and starting to lose her childish

She has many events in the book that don’t necessarily intertwine with each other but each has meaning and contributes to the overall message or theme of the book. 2 best cases of this are the Mrs. Dubose situation and the most well written case of Boo Radley. Firstly with the Mrs. Dubose situation; Scout and Jem had always thought of her as the “meanest old woman who ever lived”(Lee, 39). Later in chapter 11 when Jem was punished to read to her, there were many weird things that happened, such as Mrs. Dubose always having an alarm that would go off. Jem later learned that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict and was courageously determined to rid herself of her addiction and that Jem reading to her helped her stay off the drug. This taught Jem a lesson about not making assumptions without comprehending the full situation. Finally, perhaps the most well written example of this theme in the book was the character of Boo Radley. Harper Lee had cleverly used a full circle technique with Boo Radley mentioning him at the very beginning and then at the very end. Lee also implemented a