School

English draft
To Kill A Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee in the 1960’s and is based in a small American town in the 1930’s, Harper Lee uses key identities, relationships, places and events to communicate her ideologies and position the reader to accept her values, beliefs and attitudes. In the novel there are not many citizens who are portrayed as mockingbirds in the community of Maycomb, due to their actions and perspectives towards black people and people who support black people. The novel portrays 4 characters that definitely resemble the background of a mockingbird. These 4 people are Tom Robinson, Boo Radley and Jem and Scout Finch.

Tom Robinson is a mockingbird in the novel because he is an innocent man and who is vulnerable to the prejudice of the community. This is because he helps Mayella Ewell out of the goodness of his heart and asks for nothing in return because he is a loving man who means no harm to anyone, but is shortly killed after the trial due to the members of the racist community saying he is guilty for the reason of him having black skin colour.
“Mr. Finch, it was way last spring. I remember it because it was choppin’ time and I had my hoe with me. I said I didn’t have nothin’ but this hoe, but she said she had a hatchet and I broke up the chiffarobe. She said ‘I reckon I’ll haftagive you a nickle, won’t I?’ an’ I said, “No ma’am, there ain’t no charge.’ Then I went home.” (Lee, 1960, 197)
From this quote it goes to show that Tom is a good man because he willingly helped Mayella with the yard work, and wanted no reward in return. Tom saw the world as a positive place even though he was living in a racist community that misjudged him because of the colour of his skin. Bob Ewell is a strong racist character in the novel as in court he said to Mr Gilmer,
“I knowed who it was, all right, lived down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day.” (Lee, 1960, 181). Mayella is another example of a racist member of the community as she said to Tom on the day she was raped and beaten, “I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me.” (Lee, 1960, 186) This represents how racist the community was when talking to or about a black person when seeing them on the streets. Boo Radley was also very similar to Tom Robinson, despite the colour of his skin.

Boo Radley is portrayed as a mockingbird because he saves the Jem and Scout from being stabbed by Bob Ewell, but does not want to be placed in the spotlight for doing so because it would drag him from the shadows where he has been for decades, due to the town wrongly accusing him of committing nocturnal crimes. The town does not realise that Boo Radley is really just an innocent man who became injured by the evil of the community. Boo steps out of the shadows and reveals his true self and saves the children from being murdered by Bob Ewell, Telling the town that Boo Radley killed Bob Ewell and saved the Finch children would be the end of the world for Boo because he lived in the darkness for so long that bringing him into the light would destroy his life.
This just goes to show that Boo seems to be a weird creepy man, who lives under his house but is actually observing what goes on in the community and is keeping a close friendly eye on Jem and Scout, who he has never met before.

In the novel, Jem and Scout are innocent children playing imaginary games and are being children until they are then forced to give up their innocence in order to make sense of the trial and why their father would subject his family to the outcry of defending a black man.

To Kill A Mockingbird shows that there are still good people in the world that do nothing wrong, and just want to work for the good of others. However, these few good people are surrounded by bad people like the Ewells and the racist people of Maycomb that destroy them in a way. Each of these characters is like the mockingbird in the sense that they are all “singing their hearts out for us” in order for us to learn the lessons they can teach. We have to be willing to listen in order to learn the lessons of like these mockingbirds can teach us.