Calpurnia is intelligent and is one of the few Negroes in Maycomb who can read and write. She even taught Scout how to write by setting her tasks like copying a passage from the bible to keep her quite when she was board, so she is important in teaching the children. She lives two lives, one working for the Finch family who are white, and another at her home with her fellow Negroes. She acts and speaks differently around her friends and the children find this very surprising when they find out.
Some of the main themes in To Kill a Mockingbird are Courage, Family, Prejudice and Hatred and I think Calpurnia is important in all of these themes.
Calpurnia gives the children courage by telling them not to worry and that every thing will be alright for instance during the time of the court case and the leading up to it she told them to stay strong and not to listen to what people are saying about Atticus or the way he’s bringing Jen and Scout up. Also when she took the children to church she had the courage to stand up to her fellow Negro (Lula) who didn’t want the white children in the Black church and said to her “they’s my comp’ny” and “It’s the same God, ain’t it?”. This made Lula annoyed so she went away and didn’t say another word.
She is very important in the family theme because she is part of the Finch family and she is also part of the Negro family so in the novel she shows how you can be part of two different kinds of families and be important in both. Because of the nature of the Maycomb population the same families have lived in the area for nearly two hundred years so the people of Maycomb feel that each family has inherited particular characteristics, which has lead to social division, For instance the division between the Negroes and the whites. But Calpurnia has taught the children about the importance of family and that different backgrounds don’t mean anything.
Prejudice and Hatred are the fear and violence that exists between whites and Negroes. Calpurnia helps to teach the children what this is and how and why it is wrong so that when it comes to the court case between a Negro and a white girl, they can understand that they are both equal and that it’s an unfair case. She also helped to show the children how the people in Maycomb don’t realize their own hypocrisy and she gives them an insight into what Negro life is actually like.
Without Calpurnia Atticus would be very lonely because there would be no other adult living with him that he could talk to and he would have had no help when bringing up Jem and Scout. There would also be no one to look after the children when Atticus was at work, no one to cook the meals, no one to clean the house and no mother to love and care for the children.
Overall Calpurnia is an important character in the Novel of To Kill a Mockingbird because she is involved in all the main themes of the book, She plays a big part in both cultures, she helps to bring up the finch children and she has been apart of Maycombs society for many years.