Boo Radley - As the novel progresses, the children's changing attitude toward Boo Radley is an important measurement of their development from innocence toward a grown-up moral perspective. At the beginning of the book, Boo is merely a source of childhood superstition. As he leaves Jem and Scout presents and mends Jem's pants, he gradually becomes increasingly and intriguingly real to them. At the end of the novel, he becomes fully human to Scout, illustrating that she has developed into a sympathetic and understanding individual. Boo, an intelligent child ruined by a cruel father, is one of the book's most important mockingbirds; he is also an important symbol of the good that exists within people. Despite the pain that Boo has suffered, the purity of his heart rules his interaction with the children. In saving Jem and Scout from , Boo proves the ultimate symbol of good.
One of the central themes of To Kill a Mockingbird is the process of growing up and developing a more mature perspective on life. Correspondingly, the narrative gradually comes to mirror a loss of innocence, as the carefree childhood of this first chapter is slowly replaced by a darker, more dangerous, and more cynical adult story in which the children are only minor participants.
Boo Radley becomes the focus of the children's curiosity in Chapter 1. As befits the perspective of childhood innocence, the recluse is given no identity apart from the youthful superstitions that surround him: Scout describes him as a "malevolent phantom" over six feet tall who eats squirrels and cats. Of course, the reader realizes that there must be more to Boo's story than these superstitions imply. Eventually, Boo will be transformed from a nightmare villain into a human being, and the children's understanding of him will reflect their own journey toward adulthood.
“You never really understand a person until you ... climb into his skin and walk around in it."
Boo makes his presence felt in these chapters in a number of ways. First, the presents begin to appear in the Radley tree, and, though Scout does not realize who has been putting them there, the reader can easily guess that it is Boo. Second, Miss Maudie offers insight into the origins of Boo's reclusiveness and a sympathetic perspective on his story. Miss Maudie has only contempt for the superstitious view of Boo: he is no demon, and she knows that he is alive, because she hasn't seen him "carried out yet." From her point of view, Boo was a nice boy who suffered at the hands of a tyrannically religious family. He is one of many victims populating a book whose title, To Kill a Mockingbird, suggests the destruction of an innocent being. In fact, as a sweet, young child apparently driven mad by an overbearing father obsessed with sin and retribution, Boo epitomizes the loss of innocence that the book, as a whole, dramatizes. For the children, who first treat him as a superstition and an object of ridicule but later come to view him as a human being, Boo becomes an important benchmark in their gradual development of a more sympathetic, mature perspective.
That night, Atticus wakes Scout and sends her outside in her bathrobe and coat. Miss Maudie's house is on fire. The neighbors help her save her furniture, and the fire truck arrives in time to stop the fire from spreading to other houses, but Miss Maudie's house burns to the ground. In the confusion, someone drapes a blanket over Scout. When Atticus later asks her about it, she has no idea who put it over her. Jem realizes that put it on her, and he reveals the whole story of the knothole, the presents, and the mended pants to Atticus. Atticus tells them to keep it to themselves, and Scout, realizing that Boo was just behind her, nearly throws up.
Originally portrayed as a freak and a lunatic, Boo Radley continues to gain the sympathy of the readers and of the children in these chapters. However, Lee uses an elliptical technique in telling Boo's story—she hints and implies at what is happening without ever showing the reader directly. The reader must read between the lines—inferring, for instance, that it was Boo Radley who mended Jem's pants and placed the presents in the tree, since Scout does not realize that Boo's hand is at work until Jem explains things to Atticus after the fire.
In comparison to Scout's still very childish perspective, Jem's more mature understanding of the world is evident here, along with his strong sense of justice. When Nathan Radley plugs up the hole in the tree, Scout is disappointed but hardly heartbroken, seeing it as merely the end of their presents. Jem, on the other hand, is brought to tears, because he grasps that Boo's brother has done something cruel: he has deprived Boo of his connection to the wider world and has broken up his brother's attempt at friendship. This incident, which the reader must detect behind the scenes of Scout's narrative, plays into the novel's broad theme of suffering innocence, and Jem's anger at this injustice foreshadows his later fury concerning 's trial. While Scout retains her innocence and optimism throughout the book, Jem undergoes severe disillusionment as part of his "growing up," and the Boo Radley incident in this chapter is an important early step toward that disillusionment.
In a world in which innocence is threatened by injustice, cruelty, prejudice, and hatred, goodness can prevail in the form of sympathy, understanding, and common sense, as evidenced by how the townspeople's affectionate willingness to help one another enables them to overcome the intrusion of these Gothic elements into their simple small-town lives.
Scout overhears Atticus telling Jack that Tom Robinson is innocent but doomed, since it's inconceivable that an all-white jury would ever acquit him.
The fire in which the previous section culminated represents an important turning point in the narrative structure of To Kill a Mockingbird. Before the fire, the novel centers on Scout's childhood world, the games that she plays with Jem and Dill, and their childhood superstitions about Boo Radley. After the fire, and childhood pursuits begin to retreat from the story, and the drama of the trial takes over. This shift begins the novel's gradual dramatization of the loss-of-innocence theme, as adult problems and concerns begin disrupting the happy world of the Finch children.
The adversity faced by the family reveals Atticus's parenting style, his focus on instilling moral values in Jem and Scout. Particularly important to Atticus are justice, restraint, and honesty. He tells his children to avoid getting in fights, even if they are verbally abused, and to practice quiet courage instead. When he gives Jem and Scout air rifles as presents, he advises them that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. This idea is, of course, the source of the novel's title, and it reflects the book's preoccupation with injustices inflicted upon innocents. In different ways, Jem and Scout, Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson are all "mockingbirds
Dill's absence from Maycomb coincides appropriately with the continued encroachment of the adult world upon Scout's childhood, as Dill has represented the perspective of childhood throughout the novel.
Atticus's tenet that Scout should always try to put herself in someone else's shoes before she judges them. Lee enables us to identify with the black community in a way that makes the townspeople's unwillingness to do so seem mean-spirited and stubborn.
If the novel's main theme involves the threat that evil and hatred pose to innocence and goodness, it becomes clear that ignorant, unsympathetic racial prejudice will be the predominant incarnation of evil and hatred, as the childhood innocence of Scout and Jem is thrown into crisis by the circumstances of the trial.
However, Dill's return also emphasizes the growing gulf in development between Scout and Jem. In the previous section, we saw the twelve-year-old Jem indignantly urging Scout to act more like a girl, indicating his growing awareness of adult social roles and expectations. Here again, Jem proves clearly too old for the childhood solidarity that Dill's presence recalls. Scout relates that, upon seeing Dill under the bed, Jem "rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood" by telling Atticus. To Scout, this act makes Jem a "traitor," though it is really an act of responsibility that marks Jem's maturation toward adulthood.
As Scout duly notes, the world of childhood fun that Dill represents can no longer stave off the adult reality of hatred and unfairness that Jem finds himself entering. Whereas, two years before, the Finch children's lives were dominated by games and friendship with Dill, their lives now focus on the adult world of Tom Robinson's trial. The now mature Jem leads Scout and Dill into town on the night that Atticus faces the lynch mob. Symbolically, this scene marks Jem's transition from boy to man, as he stands beside Atticus and refuses to "go home," since only a child would do so. Though he disobeys his father, he does so not petulantly but maturely. He understands Atticus's difficult situation with regard to the case and consequently fears for Atticus's safety. Nevertheless, the confrontation is dominated by Scout's innocence, still sufficiently intact that she can chat with Walter Cunningham about his son despite being surrounded by a hostile lynch mob.
Some critics find Scout's performance and the dispersal of the mob in this scene unconvincing and pat, wondering how Scout can remain so blissfully unaware of what is really going on and how Mr. Cunningham can be persuaded by Scout's Southern courtesy to break up the drunken posse. However, within the moral universe of To Kill a Mockingbird, the behavior of both characters makes perfect sense. As befits her innocence, Scout remains convinced of other people's essential goodness, a conviction that the novel, as a whole, shares. Rather than marking them as inherently evil, the mob members' racism only shrouds their humanity, their worthiness, and their essential goodness. Scout's attempt at politeness makes Mr. Cunningham realize her essential goodness, and he responds with civility and kindness. As Atticus says later, the events of that night prove that "a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human."
he successfully reveals the injustice of a stratified society that confines blacks to the "colored balcony" and allows the word of a despicable, ignorant man like Bob Ewell to prevail without question over the word of a man who happens to be black. In the trial conducted in the courtroom, Atticus loses. In the trial conducted in the mind of the reader, it is the white community, wallowing in prejudice and hatred, that loses.
The reader knows that Tom Robinson will be found guilty, so Lee locates the tension and suspense elsewhere—in Atticus's slow but steady dismantling of the prosecution's case. Jem, still clinging to his youthful illusions about life working according to concepts of fairness, doesn't understand that his father's brilliant efforts will be in vain. He believes that the irrefutable implications of the evidence will clinch the case for Atticus. When Jem says, "We've got him," after Bob Ewell is shown to be left-handed, the reader knows better.
The irony, of course, is that Bob Ewell is completely unimportant; he is an arrogant, lazy, abusive fool, laughed at by his fellow townsfolk. Yet in the racist world of Maycomb, sadly, even he has the power to destroy an innocent man—perhaps the novel's most tragic example of the threat posed to innocence by evil.
Mayella Ewell is pitiable, and her miserable existence almost allows her to join the novel's parade of innocent victims—she, too, is a kind of mockingbird, injured beyond repair by the forces of ugliness, poverty, and hatred that surround her. Lee's presentation of Mayella emphasizes her role as victim—her father beats her and possibly molests her, while she takes care of the children.
Pity must be reserved for Tom Robinson, whose honesty and goodness render him supremely moral. Unlike the Ewells, Tom is hardworking, honest, and has enough compassion to make the fatal mistake of feeling sorry for Mayella Ewell