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But in reality, Boo ends up being a good person. Accordingly, he gave Jem and Scout many small little gifts via the knothole in the tree. These gifts inlcuded “Indian Pennies”, gum, and small carvings of Jem and Scout themselves. Additionally, he went out of his way to help the kids. When Jem was trying to escape from the place after attempting a glance through the window, his pants got caught in the fence, and he was forced to pull out without them. Surprisingly, he found that when he went back for them, they were mended (albeit not perfectly) and laid neatly across the fence. Also, the morning after Scout witnessed the conflagration that consumed Miss Maudie’s house (ironically on a very chilly winter’s night), Atticus saw that she had a…
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Mr. Arthur “Boo” Radley, a neighbor to Jem and Scout, has never been viewed correctly by everyone. Throughout the book, his neighbors imagined him as cannibalistic, mysterious, and monstrous man, however the growth of Jem and Scout result in a change of perspective. After the kids realized Boo had been caring for them by returning clothes, warming them by giving a blanket, and saving them from being killed, Boo Radley’s reputation altered greatly through the eyes of children and families in Maycomb.…
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Jem is drawn to Boo’s story, which he has heard all of his life. Townsfolk tell stories of Boo coming out at night and peeping through peoples’ windows, freezing their azaleas by breathing on them, and terrorizing household pets. When Atticus refuses to give Jem details about the Radleys, Jem turns to Miss Stephanie Crawford, the neighborhood gossip. She talks about Boo saying she “woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking…
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Boo Radley symbolises a beautiful, but tortured mockingbird that is misunderstood and ostracised by both his family and the wider community. He is kept as a prisoner in his own home, kept in confinement by his god-fearing Baptist family. Despite this treatment Boo remains gentle and harmless. However, people tell stories about how he eats squirrels and cats and poisons the pecan nuts in the school yard. To the community Boo is a "malevolent phantom". Gradually Scout and Jem begin to see things from Boo's perspective. Like the mockingbird Boo gives pleasure and comfort: for example, the gifts in the tree, the blanket placed around their shoulders as they watch Miss Maudie's home go up in flames. Finally, he saves Scout and Jem's lives. In turn, Scout realises to drag Boo into the limelight would be like "shootin' a mockingbird" and a cruel betrayal of all the inherent goodness Boo symbolises as a mockingbird.…
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Boo was locked up in the bottom of the courthouse for awhile because of this but after he came home no one ever saw him. Another reason the kids will never see him are the kids are too scared of him. Jem and Scout claim that there is a malevolent phantom living in the house otherwise known as Boo Radley. Apparently, one time Miss Stephanie Crawford woke up in the middle of the night and saw Boo Radley looking directly toward her through his window. Jem adds that Boo was scratching at their back screen late at night but was gone way before Atticus could catch him. Jem told Dill if he knocked on the Radley’s door he would definitely wind up dead. This started a chain of events where Dill dared Jem to go knock claiming that Jem was scared. Of course Jem wanted to prove to Dill he wasn’t scared of Boo Radley so, he ran through the yard slapped the house and came running back even faster. After he ran through the yard and back Scout and Dill followed right at his heels back home. They all were afraid of getting caught by Boo Radley so they ran all the way home. Jem, Scout, and Dill made…
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Boo Radley is one of the most important characters in the story. “Hey Boo,” (Lee, 362). This is the first chapter where you actually meet Boo. He is standing in the corner of Jem’s room when Jem broke his elbow. Everybody thinks Boo is this really scary person. They call him Boo because he’s like a ghost. His real name is Arthur Radley. Jem described him as, “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. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time." (Lee,chapter1) This shows what Scout and Jem thought of him. It was a not very good assumption. He turns out to be not so creepy in the way he looks and turned out to be a very nice person which scout didn’t really expect. They realized their perceptions was wrong because he gave them food, fixed Jem’s pants, and gave them dolls over time.She came to expect it as she matured and got…
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Arthur “Boo” Radley looks as if he would be to be a viciously mean or mental man by the rumors that Scout and Jem hear, but he is actually a kind person who ends up helping the main character later on in the story. They had rumors such as that, “...Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities,”(Lee, 11). There are many rumors against “Boo” for how menacing he may be, but he, “He [Boo] was carrying Jem,” (Lee, 263). Boo saved Jem after Mr.Bob Ewell tried to harm Jem and Scout after they came home walking from the school Christmas pageant, but Boo comes in to help after beating Mr.Ewell down to the ground and stabbing him. Boo cares greatly for Jem and Scout, and he tries to communicate that to them through the gifts that he leaves in the tree; “I stood on my tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappings,” (Lee,33). Boo is more than a scary rumor; he is a lonely man who has great love for the two kids who showed the most interest in him.…
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Many things can influence a child’s life. Today a child may suffer from stress all the way to learning life lessons through a breakup. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, two children, Scout and Jem had to deal with a less common stressor. They dealt with the trial and conviction of an innocent black man in their town and to make things worse, their own father Atticus was the appointed defense for Tom. Scout and Jem were six and ten at the beginning of the novel; throughout the next three years that it took place their maturity goes on to be influenced by many experiences and people. The two children learn valuable lessons from adults during events surrounding the trial such as empathy, courage, honestly, equality and justice. The main characters…
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He wants to get revenge on Atticus by hurting what he loves most--his children. On Halloween night, Scout and Jem are walking home from their school’s annual Halloween play when a drunken Bob Ewell abruptly attacks Scout and Jem. Scout recalls the incident and explains to Heck Tate, the sheriff, that “…all of a sudden somethin’ grabbed an’ mashed my costume…think I ducked on the ground…heard a tusslin’ under the tree sort of…they were bammin’ against the trunk, sounded like. Jem found me and started pullin’ me toward the road. Some—Mr. Ewell yanked him down, I reckon. They tussled some more and then there was this funny noise—Jem hollered…” (273). Scout later finds out that Boo saved them from Mr. Ewell, who was planning to kill them. Heck Tate tells Atticus that in the paper they will not mention that Boo Radley saved the children. Scout does not understand why they would not give Boo credit, since he saved their lives. After reflecting on the situation, she figures out that putting the truth in the paper would be like killing a mockingbird. There was a reason why Boo went inside his house and never came out, and acknowledging Boo in the paper would give him a lot of unwanted attention. Through this experience, Scout learns to respect other’s wishes. Also, because Boo turns out to be something completely different from what was expected, Scout…
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To Kill a Mockingbird By: Harper Lee is told by Scout Finch a seven year old trying to figure out the grown up word. This whole story is about the event that lead up to Jem (Scout’s older brother) breaking his arm. As children in the beginning of the book they have a strange person they don’t know much about. This is where Boo Radley comes in. No one knows much about him. This fact makes Scout, Jem, and Dill very curious about…
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Scout finally starts third grade, where she has become much wiser. She and Jem stop bothering the Radley residence as they empathize them, understanding what a nuisance it is to have children constantly trying to get Boo to come out, “I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley—what reasonable recluse wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night” (324). Scout finally understands from Boo’s perspective that it is bothersome to have children trying to get him come out even though he does not want to and has done nothing to them. She realizes that if she was in Boo’s shoes, she would not want to have children constantly bothering her. After Boo saves Scout and Jem, Scout walks him back to his house. Standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines the events of the novel from Boo Radley’s perspective. He watches through the windows and can see everything, looking over his “children”, Scout and Jem. Scout refers to her and Jem as Boo Radley’s children because the entire time, Boo has been watching over them as if they were his own children, only coming out of his…
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Later in the book Scout and Jem go back to Atticus’s advice in order to understand Boo Radley. After the Tom Robinson case was finished, Scout and Jem were talking with each other about what they thought of the people on his jury. Before now, both of them had always assumed Boo Radley was just a scary person who never came out. When talking, Jem said, “ Scout, I’m beginning to understand…
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Prejudice is a real life problem in the world, and in To Kill Mockingbird’s novel this problem is evident in May comb. Boo Radley, Atticus finch and Tom Robinson are all victims of prejudice.…
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In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout learns valuable lessons on the evil of prejudice present in her Southern town of Maycomb, on the true nature of courage, and on the dangers of judging others before "...climbing into their skin and walking around in it." Set in the mid 1930s, Scout Finch is a young girl living with her older brother, Jem, and her lawyer father. Being a kid, Scout has the simple duties of a minor, to have fun and to stay out of trouble. But along the way, she also learns many important things. Although the majority of her hometown is prejudiced, Scout's innocent mind remains non prejudice and caring of others. To her, all is equal, so therefore, should be treated equal. There is no doubt that Scout's character is one whom is an individual, someone whom will stick to her own perspective no matter how cruel and racist other people can be. In her adult world, Scout learns to treat all people fairly with dignity and respect.…
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In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch included many themes in his closing speech to the jury. Some of the themes were loneliness, racism, human nature, and equality. The theme loneliness was demonstrated in the speech when Atticus attacked Mayella’s loneliness and blamed her for her child – like decision to accuse Tom Robinson for her unhappiness. “She did something every child has done – she tried to put the evidence of her offence away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim …” Another theme of Atticus’s speech was racism, which was shown when the jury did not believe the word of Tom Robinson, a black man, over the word of “white trash” like the Ewells. Atticus attempted his point that Tom had been exploited and unjustly accused. “And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people's.” Racism was also demonstrated throughout the story by how Tom Robinson was convicted purely because he was a black man and his accuser was white. The evidence was so powerfully in his favor, that race was clearly the single defining factor in the jury's decision. Human nature was one of the themes shown in Atticus’s speech. It was shown when Atticus reminded the jury that not all Negroes lie, not all are immoral, and not all can be trusted around women – black or white, and that blackness does not necessarily associate to evil. “… some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women – black or white …” Atticus then further appealed to the jury the honest of nature. “… this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no 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 there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.” Lastly,…
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