To Kill a Mockingbird Analytical Essay

OF MOCKINGBIRDS AND MEN

2007

It is a sin to kill a mockingbird ' because they don 't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us ' If Harper Lee 's famed novel To Kill a Mockingbird can be summed in one sentence , this perceptive phrase is the perfect fit . Lee tells her story in the simplest of terms to relay the most complex of messages . Each character symbolizes a vital truth , and by making the reader care about the characters , Lee in turn allows the reader to care about what they

represent . She skillfully uses the character of Boo Radley as a parallel to Tom Robinson . Both can be seen as the mockingbird ' innocents who must live - and often fight - for their lives in an impure , tainted environment . However , young narrator Scout provides the purest personification of a mockingbird 's delicate , hopeful innocence

Scout 's innocence is evident in her attitude towards the town . She simply views her neighbors as they are , never truly elaborating on the prejudice she witnesses while objectively reporting it . And the reader - through Scout 's s - definitely observes enough prejudice in tiny Maycomb , where everybody knows everybody ' The class distinctions of the citizens , for example , are clearly pronounced . The Finches seem like a fairly well-to-do family (Atticus is a lawyer , after all , but one sees the lower middle-class in the Cunninghams , who are a poor but respectable family . Even further down the ladder are the Ewells , who are the stereotypical white trash ' literally living behind a garbage dump in a broken-down shack . The family patriarch , the drunken Bob Ewell , and his numerous children are looked upon by the rest of the town as the lowest forms alive - the lowest forms , that is except for the Negroes . The caste-like imprisonment of the lower classes (because it is the way things have always been ) is the first example of prejudice that Lee introduces

Prejudice is also directed towards Scout herself , in the form of the restrictive gender roles which the town imposes . Scout is repeatedly told to act like a lady ' by her Aunt Alexandra , whom she must attend a female gathering ' with . The women sit and drink tea and gossip That is their role in the town . They cannot even serve on the jury Miss (every lady is called Miss by Scout ) Stephanie is the town gossip and Aunt Alexandra is the cold and distant woman obsessed with preserving the family name . Perhaps Mayella Ewell , the alleged rape victim , is the most tragic female of the story , and probably one of the most tragic characters . She has many factors working against her : the fact that she is a woman , her social status , her abusive father , and her loneliness (when Atticus talks of friendship in court , she is genuinely confused . Her only source of joy are her red geraniums that have somehow managed to blossom amongst the filth she is surrounded in . The symbolic importance of these little flowers becomes more and more powerful as...