To Kill a Mockingbird Key Passage Essay Example

A Sin to Kill a Mockingbird Evil will exist whether you like it or not because it counteracts good and balances it out. To Kill a Mockingbird is to take away or kill the innocence of a person that is innocent themselves. There is no reason to hurt anyone when they have done nobody harm. The novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, is about civil rights and prejudice as seen through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch (Scout) when she was younger. Scout introduces characters such as her father Atticus Finch, an attorney who strongly believes in equality for all and desperately tries to prove the innocence of an African American man unjustly accused of rape; and her neighbor Boo Radley, a mysterious recluse who had left his personal and sentimental gifts in a knot hole for Scout and Jem, and proved that all the horrible myths about him had been false. As Miss Maudie explains why Atticus is correct as to never kill a mockingbird, the motif continues throughout the novel and provides information concerning the characterization of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. The passage when Atticus is talking to his two children about killing mockingbirds provides a reoccurring theme about good and evil. After Atticus had given the air-rifles to Scout and Jem, he had told them, “When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot.” (90). The reason why Atticus did not want to teach his children to shoot is later explained when he shot Tim Johnson. He knows that he is civilized and was given a talent that was not fair to most living things. His talent was unjust and evil and him using if he used his talent then he would be destroyed by evil. The quote where Heck Tate insists that Bob Ewell had accidently fell on his own knife also explains goodness destroyed by evil. Heck Tate informs Atticus, “taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight- to me, that’s a sin” (276). Atticus was sure that it was