Boo Radley In To Kill A Mockingbird

Profiling is, “the use of personal characteristics or behavior patterns to make generalizations about a person”. Boo Radley, a character of To Kill A Mockingbird, often keeps to himself in his house. He is barely outside the house and the people of Maycomb County have the fallacy of him being a monster to scare the town. Jem describes Boo 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” (Lee 14). Not a lot of people have seen Boo or gotten to know him, so it is easy to prognosticate him as they see fit. Scout had got to know Boo Radley more and had found out that he is a good person who was misunderstood. Olaf is the main character of Wright’s Eight Men: Big Black Good Man. He is a hotel landlord who has never before seen himself as a racist or judgemental person. One night though, Olaf meets a man who wants room and service. Olaf wants to deny him service due to his appearance. “He was emotionally determined to refuse a man a room solely on the basis of the man’s size and color…”( Wright 89). Olaf had profiled the man as a threat and was intimidated by him. But at the end of the story, after Olaf had received a gift from the man, he realizes that the man is actually a friend not a foe. “You’re a big black good man” (Wright 101).
The people of Maycomb County had profiled Boo Radley as a sort of savage brute. Olaf had profiled the hotel visitor as a threat because of how he looked. In both texts, profiling had giving the characters a reason to fear judge one another. Instead of trying to communicate with the other characters and sorting out an understanding of each other, the characters (Olaf and Maycomb County residents) choose to judge the the other characters. This creates conflict between them because of how they view the person they are