What Does Miss Maudie Symbolize In To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that express the effect of racism and discrimination through many different characters. Miss Maudie is the neighbor of Scout, the main character, and supports the town of Maycomb in different ways. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Miss Maudie symbolizes a mockingbird and supports the theme, “You don’t know someone until you have walked in their shoes”. Throughout the novel, we learn what a mockingbird symbolizes and the reader can finally start to understand the novel's title. Miss Maudie herself explains to the reader what a mockingbird is when she tells Scout, “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

Miss Maudie states, “His name is Arthur and he is still alive” (Lee 48). She also states, “No child, that is a sad house. I remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did'' (Lee 51). The first piece of evidence reveals to the reader that Miss Maudie sees everybody as a person since she is using his full name instead of his nickname made up by the kids of Maycomb. The second piece of evidence reveals to the reader that when you see Arther’s story from another perspective he seems as if he was just a well-hearted and normal child. The reader is also shown Miss Maudie is a neutral party when she talks about Atticus, Scout's father, after he had to shoot a potentially dangerous dog. She describes him by saying, “If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his heart… I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn’t shoot till he had to, and he had to today” (Lee 112). Miss Maudie’s explanation tells the reader the real reason why Atticus put down the gun. Most people in Maycomb would not understand why he put the gun down, but if they looked at the situation from Atticus’s perspective or “shoes'' they would see he just put the gun down to prevent harm. The reason Miss Maudie even said this quote was because Scout did not