Near the end of the book Atticus says to Heck Tate,

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Near the end of the book Atticus says to Heck Tate, "Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got."

How do you judge Atticus as a parent? Does he make any mistakes? What do other characters say about him?

Atticus is a single parent who is nearly fifty years old when we first meet him. He lives with his two children, Jem who is 10 at the beginning of the book, and Scout who is six. His wife died when Scout was two, so Atticus has had to bring the children up for four years, on his own, with help from Calpurnia-a coloured servant.

Atticus is a lawyer, who practises in his hometown, which is a small town called Maycomb in Alabama. Hard times fall upon the Finch family when Atticus is appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white girl. Atticus does not have to agree to take the case, but his self-respect and pride demand that he makes sure Tom gets a fair trial. He knows that he does not have a good chance of winning the trial, because it is a case of a white mans word against a black man, he admits this, "we were licked before we started". This act displays his belief in humanity and his sense of justice. It also verifies that Atticus is not a racist man and views the black community as equals. This attitude was not prevalent at the time, despite the fact that it was over seventy years since the Civil War.

We learn of Atticus' approach to bringing up his children when Scout says, "he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment". This, however, is not the only view Scout and Jem have of their father. To begin with they seem disappointed that their father does not do the same sort of things that other fathers do. He does not play football or poker, and he does not drink or smoke. Even though Atticus may have been remote in some of his dealings with his children, he did speak frankly to them, even about embarrassing things. He bought them a shotgun for Christmas, telling them not to kill a mocking bird. He may have been reserved, but I think he was very knowing about his children and expressed his feelings in more obscure ways. Scout is curious about her father, and so asks Miss Maudie, a neighbour, and Calpurnia about him. They give her a short list of things he can do, for example Miss Maudie says, "he can make somebody's will so airtight can't anybody meddle with it." She also mentions that Atticus is a good chequer-player, and can play a Jews harp. However, these are not the sort of things that a child would be impressed with. So the children are stunned when a mad dog comes to their street and Heck Tate asks Atticus to shoot it, "Jem and I nearly fainted", they were even more shocked when their father actually takes the gun and shoots the dog, "Jem was paralysed." After this incident, the children take a completely different view on their father and are more respectful. Jem in particular finds peace with the fact that Atticus is old, and can not do much, "I wouldn't care if he couldn't do a blessed thing". After this event, Miss Maudie talks to the children about their father and his character,
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"If your father's anything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, a talent - oh, you have to practise to make it perfect, but shootin's different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot till he had to, and he had to today."

The fact that Miss Maudie mentions that Atticus is civilized in his heart suggests that she admires his principals. Throughout the ...

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