TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Harper Lee
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the
fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Coexistence of Good and
Evil
The most important theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is the book’s exploration of the moral
nature of human beings—that is, whether people are essentially good or
essentially evil. The novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and
Jem’s transition from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which they
assume that people are good because they have never seen evil, to a more adult
perspective, in which they have confronted evil and must incorporate it into
their understanding of the world. As a result of this portrayal of the transition
from innocence to experience, one of the book’s important subthemes involves
the threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance pose to the innocent: people
such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not prepared for the evil that they
encounter, and, as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to an
extent by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after the trial.
Whereas Scout is able to maintain her basic faith in human nature despite Tom’s
conviction, Jem’s faith in justice and in humanity is badly damaged, and he
retreats into a state of disillusionment.
The moral voice of To Kill a Mockingbird is embodied by Atticus Finch, who is
virtually unique in the novel in that he has experienced and understood evil
without losing his faith in the human capacity for goodness. Atticus
understands that, rather than being simply creatures of good or creatures of
evil, most people have both good and bad qualities. The important thing is to
appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad qualities by treating
others with sympathy and trying to see life from their perspective. He tries to
teach this ultimate moral lesson to Jem and Scout to show them that it is
possible to live with conscience without losing hope or becoming cynical. In
this way, Atticus is able to admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage even while deploring
her racism. Scout’s progress as a character in the novel is defined by her
gradual development toward understanding Atticus’s lessons, culminating when,
in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley as a human being. Her
newfound ability to view the world from his perspective ensures that she will
not become jaded as she loses her innocence.
The Importance of Moral
Education
Because exploration of the
novel’s larger moral questions takes place within the perspective of children,
the education of children is necessarily involved in the development of all of
the novel’s themes. In a sense, the plot of the story charts Scout’s moral
education, and the theme of how children are educated—how they are taught to
move from innocence to adulthood—recurs throughout the novel (at the end of the
book, Scout even says that she has learned practically everything except
algebra). This theme is explored most powerfully through the relationship
between Atticus and his children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social
conscience in Jem and Scout. The scenes at school provide a direct counterpoint
to Atticus’s effective education of his children: Scout is frequently
confronted with teachers who are either frustratingly unsympathetic to
children’s needs or morally hypocritical. As is true of To Kill a Mockingbird’s other
moral themes, the novel’s conclusion about education is that the most important
lessons are those of sympathy and understanding, and that a sympathetic,
understanding approach is the best way to teach these lessons. In this way,
Atticus’s ability to put himself in his children’s shoes makes him an excellent
teacher, while Miss Caroline’s rigid commitment to the educational techniques
that she learned in college makes her ineffective and even dangerous.
The Existence of Social
Inequality
Differences in social status
are explored largely through the overcomplicated social hierarchy of Maycomb,
the ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children. The relatively
well-off Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with most of
the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the Cunninghams lie
below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below the Cunninghams.
But the black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of admirable
qualities, squats below even the Ewells, enabling Bob Ewell to make up for his
own lack of importance by persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid social
divisions that make up so much of the adult world are revealed in the book to
be both irrational and destructive. For example, Scout cannot understand why
Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young Walter Cunningham. Lee
uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant layering of Maycomb society to
critique the role of class status and, ultimately, prejudice in human
interaction.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring
structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text’s major themes.
Gothic Details
The forces of good and evil in To Kill a Mockingbird seem larger than the small Southern
town in which the story takes place. Lee adds drama and atmosphere to her story
by including a number of Gothic details in the setting and the plot. In
literature, the term Gothic refers to a style of fiction first popularized in
eighteenth-century England, featuring supernatural occurrences, gloomy and
haunted settings, full moons, and so on. Among the Gothic elements in To Kill a Mockingbird are the unnatural snowfall, the fire
that destroys Miss Maudie’s house, the children’s superstitions about Boo
Radley, the mad dog that Atticus shoots, and the ominous night of the Halloween
party on which Bob Ewell attacks the children. These elements, out of place in
the normally quiet, predictable Maycomb, create tension in the novel and serve
to foreshadow the troublesome events of the trial and its aftermath.
Small-Town Life
Counterbalancing the Gothic
motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned, small-town values, which
manifest themselves throughout the novel. As if to contrast with all of the
suspense and moral grandeur of the book, Lee emphasizes the slow-paced,
good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes
small-town values and Gothic images in order to examine more closely the forces
of good and evil. The horror of the fire, for instance, is mitigated by the
comforting scene of the people of Maycomb banding together to save Miss
Maudie’s possessions. In contrast, Bob Ewell’s cowardly attack on the
defenseless Scout, who is dressed like a giant ham for the school pageant,
shows him to be unredeemably evil.
Symbols
Symbols are objects,
characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Mockingbirds
The title of To Kill a
Mockingbirdhas very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries a
great deal of symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed
by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to
kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Throughout the book, a number of
characters (Jem, Tom Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr. Raymond) can be identified
as mockingbirds—innocents who have been injured or destroyed through contact
with evil. This connection between the novel’s title and its main theme is made
explicit several times in the novel: after Tom Robinson is shot, Mr. Underwood
compares his death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” and at the end of
the book Scout thinks that hurting Boo Radley would be like “shootin’ a
mockingbird.” Most important, Miss Maudie explains to Scout: “Mockingbirds
don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a
sin to kill a mockingbird.” That Jem and Scout’s last name is Finch (another
type of small bird) indicates that they are particularly vulnerable in the
racist world of Maycomb, which often treats the fragile innocence of childhood
harshly.
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 Bob Ewell, Boo proves the ultimate
symbol of good.
