To Kill A Mockingbird

My report is on To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee which is about a young girl from a sleepy town in Alabama where she finds friendship and her father showing heroic traits even though he’s struggling with his morals.

Scout Finch, who is the narrator of the story, lives with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, in the small friendly town of Maycomb, Alabama circa 1930s with lots of old ladies baking cakes and town sheriffs saying homely things. Oh, and also morphine-addicted old ladies, abusive families living by the dump, and a pretty nasty racial divide, but we’ll get into that later. One summer, Jem and Scout become friends with a boy named Dill who is spending the summer with his aunt who lives in the Finch’s neighborhood. Eventually, Dill becomes fascinated with the creepy house on their street called the Radley Place. The house is owned by Nathan Radley, whose brother, Boo Radley, is the town boogeyman, the mythical childhood legend who never came out of his house, except at night, when he spied into windows and ate cats. With a story like that, the children became interested in getting Boo out of his house and spent the whole summer trying and failing.

When summer is over, it’s time for Scout to go to her first year at school and she hates it because her teacher is evil. Things start to look better when her and Jem find gifts left for them in a hole of a tree on the Radley property on the way back home. They continue to receive gifts for a while, when all of a sudden the tree hole is filled with cement by Nathan Radley because he claims that the tree is dying.

Dill returns the next summer, and he, Scout, and Jem begin to act out the story of Boo Radley. Atticus catches them and makes them stop saying that the kids have to try to see life from that person’s perspective before making judgments. But on Dill’s last night in Maycomb for summer, the three sneak onto the Radley property. Unfortunately for the children, Nathan Radley hears and mistakes them for a couple of raccoons and shoots at them. Jem had the worst luck out of all of them, and got his pants caught on the fence while trying to crawl under it. He gets out of the yard in the knick of time having to sacrifice his pants. When he returns a couple of hours later to get his jeans back, he finds them mended and hanging over the fence. That winter, a fire breaks out in a neighbor’s house, and during the fire Boo places a blanket over oblivious Scout as she watches the house burn, showing he isn’t a total weirdo and is capable of affection.

To the dismay of Maycomb’s racist white community, Atticus who is a lawyer, agrees to defend a black man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of raping a white woman.
Because of Atticus’s decision, the children are exposed to abuse from other children. Calpurnia, the Finch’s black cook, takes them to the local black church where they are warmly welcomed, unlike when they go to their own church and are frowned upon.

Atticus’s sister, Alexandra, comes to live with the Finch’s the next summer. And Dill who is supposed to be living with his “new father” in another town, runs away to Maycomb. Tom Robinson’s trial starts and when he is placed in the local jail, a mob gathers to lynch him. Atticus faces the mob the night before trial. Jem and Scout sneak out of the house and soon join him. Scout recognizes one of the men and her innocent questioning about his son shames him into leaving the mob.

At the trial, the children sit in the “colored balcony” with the town’s black citizens. Atticus provides clear evidence the accusers, Mayella Ewell, and her father, Bob Ewell, are lying. Yet, despite the obvious evidence pointing to Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. Tom later tries to escape from prison and is shot to death by the guards. After the trial, Jem and Scout lose much of their faith in the justice system.

Regardless of the verdict, Bob Ewell feels Atticus and the judge have made a fool out of him and seeks revenge. He threatens Tom Robinson’s widow, tries to break into the judge’s house, and even attacks Jem and Scout on their way back home from a Halloween party. Boo Radley intervenes, saving the children and stabbing Bob fatally. Boo carries a wounded Jem back home, where the sheriff, trying to protect Boo, insists that Bob tripped over a tree root and fell on his own knife. Once the sheriff left, Boo stuck around the Finch’s house. Boo is skinny and pale, with thinning hair and gray, colorless eyes and not at all what Scout expected. And when sitting with Scout, he is obviously uncomfortable. However, he goes into Jem’s room and pats his head then asks Scout if she can walk him back home, and so she does. Once they were on front steps of his house, he gives her hand a squeeze before letting go and going back into his house never to be seen again.

Friendship plays a large role in this story. The first event involving friendship is when Scout and Jem meet Dill. At first they don’t seem to like Dill. That was until Dill started to talk about the movie Dracula, and everything after that was history. The summer continues and the children are up to a bunch of mischief, but all too soon, it was time for Dill to go back home. The next summer arrived before any of them realized it. But sadly Dill was not there. He had stayed with his new step father in another county. Scout missed him a lot saying, “…summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill’s eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” (Pg. 154) Lucky for her, Dill ran away that summer to be with his best friends in Maycomb.

Another example of friendship is when Scout begins to realize all Boo has done for her saying, “Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.” (Pg. 373) Boo took care of the kids. He gave them things without expecting anything in return and it took Scout awhile to figure that out. This quote also talks about how Boo saved Jem and Scout’s life. He also changed their life in more ways then they realize and all though they can try, they will never be to do the same.

When Scout walked Boo back to his house, she stood on his front porch and did what her dad had been telling her what to do her whole life. She stopped and tried to place herself in Boo’s shoes. “Summer, and he watches his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him.” (Pg. 374) If you read the whole passage, it continues to talk about the different seasons and emotions the kids were showing or the things they were doing. But for the sake of keeping this within five to eight pages, I chose this quote. You see, as the kids were growing up and going through different stages of their life, Boo was there. Of course they didn’t realize it, but he was. And with every part of them he saw, his love for them continued to grow and grow. The summer their hearts broke, I’m sure there was nothing more that he wanted to do but kill the person who caused it. And that fall, he did. He saved the people who mattered the most in his life, his friends.

Heroism is another huge theme in this story. The Finch children begin to learn the meaning of a true hero and start to show it themselves. Scout, who still at a young age, doesn’t fully understand the meaning of a true hero but at the request of his father, becomes an example of one. At school, Scout is well known for her quick temper and ability to get in fights. Since Atticus took the case, Scout is getting in a lot more fights to not openly defend her honor, but to defend her family’s as well. However, Atticus confronts her and tells her to hold her “…head up high an keep those fists down,” which upsets Scout (101). The next day, Scout decides to listen to Atticus and when she is challenged by Cecil Jacobs, Scout decides the walk away. All the children begin to call her a coward and laugh at her but Scout keeps her head up high. Even though she knows that all the kids will insult her, Scout goes through with it anyways. Jem also becomes an example of a hero when he is at the jailhouse with the lynch mob. Despite being severely outnumbered, Jem decides to stand by his father and defend the door to the jailhouse. Armed with guns and other weapons, the lynch mob can seriously hurt Jem, but he doesn’t care. All that matters to him is that he stands by his father and supports what he believes in. This just shows that true heroes do not have to be old and wise, and do not have to make huge sacrifices; they just need to stand up for their beliefs in times where there is so support whatsoever.

An unlikely hero in the book is Mrs. Dubose, who strongly overcame her morphine addiction. At first, Mrs. Dubose is seen as an evil and prejudiced character that hates Jem and Scout. Atticus reminds them to see it from her point of view before judging her which leads to them learning about her drug addiction. Mrs. Dubose needs the children to help her through it, yet she suffered in silence. Moreover, she is very ill and close to dying. The real courage comes from the fact that although she knows that she will die, she still tries to overcome her addiction, no matter how painful and difficult it is. Atticus’ description of true heroes is “…when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what (149).” In the end, Mrs. Dubose is able to die honorably and free from her demons. Even though it didn’t matter much to the rest of the world, it was still important to her, and that’s what makes her a true hero.

Atticus Finch is the real hero of the book because he takes the biggest risk, despite knowing that he will definitely lose. Atticus shows in many cases, the definition of a true hero but no situation was more important than the Tom Robinson trial. In Maycomb, the thought of taking a black man’s word over a white man’s is ridiculous to the citizens, especially over a matter as serious as a black man raping a white woman. Regardless of this information, Atticus still takes Tom Robinson’s case and tries to make as big of a difference as possible. When Scout asks him if he thinks that he will win the case, Atticus calmly replies “No, honey” (101). Atticus goes on to explain that “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win (101).” Basically, Atticus believes that just because it is unlikely that he will win, doesn’t mean he has to give up before trying. In the weeks before the trial, the Finch family had to endure huge amounts of judgment because of the case. Atticus in specific, received discrimination from people such as Mrs. Dubose and his own sister. It even went as far as his own nephew, saying that he was ruining the family and that they cannot even walk the streets anymore. Through all these hardships, Atticus remains strong and focuses on his goal, no matter how tough it is. In his closing statements, Atticus pleas to the jury in a manner that the children have never seen before: “His voice had lost its aridity, its detachment (271).” He no longer was speaking as a professional, he was pleading from his heart for them to abandon their set biases. He knows in his heart that they won’t, but that does not stop him from trying. When the verdict actually comes and unanimously finds Tom Robinson guilty, Atticus has nothing to do but feel proud that he might have made a difference. Which after all, is all he could possibly have done.

Throughout reading our textbook, we learned that friendship isn’t always between people of the same age, gender, or race. Or that heroes are men with tights and a cape saving babies from house fires. Friendship is when you care about someone and you would do anything for that person. Being a hero is being different. Inspiring someone to do something that’s right. And maybe just a little bit of getting cats down from trees. And I think To Kill A Mockingbird is the perfect example of that.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing. 1960. Print.