It is easy to understand that the mockingbird in the story is Tom Robinson, a harmless man who becomes a victim of racial prejudice. Robinson, a black man is accused of assaulting and raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Defended by Atticus Finch, the father of the main character, Scout Finch, and the ethical centre of the book, Robinson was convicted despite all the evidence that certainly proved him innocent. Like the mockingbird, Tom has never done wrong to anyone. Even the jurors who sentenced him to death had nothing personal against him. They found him guilty mostly because they felt that to take the word of a black man over two whites (Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell) would threaten the system under which they lived, the system of segregation. After Tom was killed for attempting to escape from prison, Mr Underwood wrote in an editorial that he "simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children". The parallel between killing a mockingbird and killing a cripple man, Tom, is apparent here. Both of them are completely defenceless before their persecutors and, thus, it is sinful for them to be killed in that way.
At the same time the mockingbird may also refer to Boo Radley. Boo Radley is another harmless creature who falls victim of cruelty. He is unjustly regarded as an evil person and used as the scapegoat for everything bad happening in town. Throughout the book, Boo Radley is a misunderstood character, unknown to society in Maycomb. He first comes into the novel through the creative imagination of Jem:
“Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was 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 blood-stained – 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.”
Boo Radley was judged on the stories about him passed on orally by the citizens of Maycomb. Nobody knew his true self. It is not until the end of the book that they actually see Boo Radley on reality when Bob Ewell attempted to murder the Finch kids. Nobody sees what happens in the scuffle but at the end of it, Ewell is dead and Boo is carrying an unconscious Jem to the Finch house. Scout later implies by saying that if she told people that Boo killed Mr Ewell, it would be like shooting a mockingbird:
“Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr Tate was right” Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?” “Well it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
The snowman that Jem and Scout made in front of Miss Maudie Atkinson's house one winter was another important example of symbolism used to show the prejudice and narrow-mindedness of society in Maycomb. There was not enough snow for the snowman so Jem used dirt for the foundation and then covered it with the snow that they did have. The snowman is symbolic in that Jem is trying to cover up the black man and show that he is the same as the white man. This implies the author’s personal opinion about racism. It suggests Lee’s belief that all humans, black or white, are equal. In contrast, the fire in Miss Maudie’s house shows the prejudice of Maycomb. The snowman changes yet again as her house burns to the ground, melting the snow and leaving nothing but a clump of mud. Is Lee reflecting the townspeople’s view that blacks and whites are indeed not the same, or is she evoking the old proverb, “United we stand, divided we fall”, suggesting that unless blacks and whites are united, the Maycomb lifestyle will fall.
Lee however does not only use symbolism to reveal the prejudiced characters of Maycomb, but also the characters that are against prejudice. An example of this is the symbolism of Mrs Dubose’s camellias. Although unknown to Jem and Scout until after she died, Mrs Dubose was a morphine addict who had vowed to go clean before she died. She enlisted Jem through reading to her to keep her off the morphine for longer and longer periods of time. At the same time however, Mrs Dubose used her hurtful words to keep her mind off the morphine. After insulting Atticus for standing up for Robinson, Jem cuts off the camellias in Mrs Dubose’s front yard:
“(Jem) ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs Dubose’s front yard… He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops of every camellia bush Mrs Dubose had owned”.
Here Jem is trying to destroy the ways of the prejudice white people of Maycomb County (since camellia flowers are white). However Atticus later forces Jem to nurse the plants back to health and read to Mrs Dubose. The writer is trying to suggest that Jem’s nursing of the flowers signify his courage and how he nurses his courage, so he will be able to tolerate what others say about him and his family. The children visiting and reading to Mrs Dubose is symbolic of their aims to change the racist ways of Maycomb. Jem’s courage is further seen through the lesson he learns from his father, Atticus:
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Not only does Lee use symbolism to show prejudice and narrow-mindedness, but she also uses language to show this. Two characters; Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell, can have their spoken language compared and contrasted to show their views on prejudice.
“I seen that black nigger ruttin’ on my Mayella”
In this quote said by Bob Ewell during the courtroom scene, the word ruttin’ makes black men seem like animals, giving black men a bestial, non-human quality. The writer deliberately wanted to make the reader think about the idea of racism and prejudice. Similar language is used when Mr Gilmer, the prosecutor at the trial, continually refers to Tom as “boy” and refers to him as a “big buck” which adds to the non-human, bestial representation of black people. This is however in contrast to the way that Atticus uses language:
“Do you defend niggers, Atticus?" "Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common."
Harper Lee skilfully applies this to show how far ahead Atticus was at this time. He knew that the word nigger was offensive to the blacks at this time. He showed the respect and common courtesy which was very rare of an affluent white male. Most of the blacks lived in the bad part of town, or the "slums." Even if they had the money, they wouldn't have been able to live in an upper class neighbourhood like the Finches. Blacks were considered dirty and unsanitary therefore, people didn't want them next to their houses. They feared that it would bring down their real estate value along with their reputations.
Prejudice showed its face many times in To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some of those instances it showed itself being overcome. From prejudice caused by isolation against Boo Radley to racial prejudice against Tom Robinson, the book has displayed every aspect of how people can look through the window and see things completely narrow-minded. From the book, it can be perceived that Lee is referring to the progression of the USA, in a time where many civil rights movements were going on in America (the book was published in 1960). However still in our society today, in the year 2011, prejudice and narrow-mindedness can be seen everywhere we go and it will be a matter of time until this fades away.
