Analysis of To Kill a Mocking Bird Essay

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.

To Kill a Mockingbird was written in Alabama during the Depression, and is described by the major character, a little girl named Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Her father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer with high ethical values. Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill are maneuvered by the local gossip about a man named Boo Radley, who lives in their district but never leaves his house. Legend has it that he once bashed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors, and he is said to be a type of monster. Dill lives in Mississippi but he his vacations in Maycomb.

There goes the meanest man that ever took a breath of life

The story seems to say that Atticus is Atticus because of Maycomb. "He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him. . . ." Later, when Atticus is striving to console Jem about the culpable judgment in the Tom Robinson case he tells Jem that they are going to live in Maycomb after the case is over. Though so, Maycomb is no ecstasy; no paradise on the hill, no place one can celebrate without worries and melancholy. It is living in Maycomb, working at law there, that we see Atticus as the man that he is.

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Atticus decides to work on a case linking a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been blamed of raping a very meager white girl named Mayella Ewell, as he said, Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand. Mayella Ewell is a member of the disreputable Ewell family, who belong to the level of Maycomb society that people call as "trash." The Finch family faces cruel disapproval in the greatly bigoted Maycomb because of Atticus's choice to protect Tom. But, Atticus persist on going through with the case because his principles could not let him do otherwise. He knows Tom is blameless, and also that he has almost no chance at being find not guilty, because the white adjudicators will never consider a black man over a white woman. In spite of this, Atticus wants to disclose the fact to his fellow townspeople, depict their racism, and support them to picture the option of racial fairness. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Atticus, father of Scout and Jem, also fulfills the responsibility of a teacher, for his children and his town. "There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible." Atticus thinks that people typically contain features of both good and wickedness, but that the good will usually succeed. He is of the belief that The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. As he works to guard Tom Robinson, a guiltless black man accused of raping a white woman. In the chauvinistic town of Maycomb in the heart of America's South during the Depression era, this is a phenomenal task. Regardless of the challenge of conquering the town's intensely embedded bigotry and forcing people to change their social viewpoint, Atticus fights back, because he considers that one day, kindness will triumph over the ills of prejudice and racial fairness will survive.

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea 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,"

To kill a mocking bird does a great job in depicting the tremendous prejudice that subsists in the south at that time. It made an influential declaration on how fairness can be distorted through bigotry. The subjects found in the book are topics which can still be found in our existing society and that make it the more attractive. You can even make a case that chauvinism still has an outcome in our legal system today. The difficulty is society can inspire beliefs that can act as a curtain and blind the people from impartiality. The only way to expose this veil is through people like Atticus who can pass his ethics and dignity to the young and the blinded.

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks.