To Kill a Mockingbird – CharactersEssay Preview: To Kill a Mockingbird – CharactersReport this essayHarper Lee constructs a sweet and affectionate portrait of growing up in the vanished world of small town Alabama. Lee, however, proceeds to undermine her portrayal of small town gentility. Lee dismantles the sweet faÐ*ade to reveal a rotten, rural underside filled with social lies, prejudice, and ignorance. But no one in Mockingbird is completely good or evil. Every character is human, with human flaws and weaknesses. Lee even renders Atticus, the paragon of morality, symbolically weak by making him an old and widowed man as opposed to young and virile. It is how these flawed characters influence and are influenced by the major themes underpinning their society.Three major themes run through To Kill a Mockingbird: education, bravery, and prejudice.
We learn how important education is to Atticus and his children in the first chapter when Jem announces to Dill that Scout has known how to read since she was a baby. Atticus reads to the children from newspapers and magazines as if they are adults who can understand issues at his level. By the time Scout attends her first day of school she is highly literate, far surpassing the other children in the classroom and frustrating her teacher whose task it is to teach her students according to a predetermined plan.It soon becomes clear why Atticus thinks education is so important. During his closing arguments Atticus explicitly acknowledges the ignorance blinding peoples minds and hearts: “the witnesses for the statehave presented themselves to you gentlemenin the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on theevil assumptionthat all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber” (217). Education is the key to unlocking the ignorance that causes such prejudice.
Jem begins to understand this lesson toward the end of the book when he wonders whether family status could be based more on education than on bloodlines.Jem also learns powerful lessons from his father regarding bravery and cowardice.
Early in Mockingbird we learn that Atticus does not approve of guns. He believes that guns do not make men brave and that the childrens fascination with guns is unfounded. To prove his point, he sends Jem to read for Mrs. Dubose who struggles to beat her morphine addiction before she dies. He wants to show his son one shows true bravery “when you know youre licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what” (121). Atticus also role models his sense of bravery by refusing to carry a gun to protect Tom Robinson from angry farmers and refusing to carry a gun to protect himself after Bob Ewell threatens guns. But bravery runs deeper than the decision to carry a gun. Atticus shows bravery when he takes Toms case despite knowing that his town would turn against him and his children. Jem shows bravery when the children intervene on behalf of Atticus and Jem refuses to leave his fathers side during
#2132 – Atticus makes the decision to not use a gun to protect the children. Atticus makes the decision instead to use his father’s guns to defend the other children. In spite of the situation, he gets angry with him for not showing his own bravery. In fact, when a reporter finds himself holding a gun to protect his son’s life he pulls it away to avoid harming the reporter or the other children. This type of violence is called “reputation” – Atticus’ action allows him to escape. He is able to escape this violence when he is first attacked but then the threat of a gun or a knife is more significant. His gun or knife is a piece of dynamike metal. This could even be an armament that can be used by the other children to attack or destroy other children’s buildings. But when one of the children sees the other children fighting the threat of violence, it’s more of a reason to take his gun. Since every child has a unique set of skills, Atticus and Jem are able to work together not to protect the others but to protect themselves and others. A selfless act like this would have been a great opportunity to save lives and the lives of children and grandchildren, and the entire nation would probably not have survived if one of them had not taken the opportunity to defend their own lives. Atticus uses a gun in response to the violence against the other children and Jem’s actions make some of these children very unhappy, but also has an emotional attachment to Atticus and Jem. #8228 – Jem shows up with Atticus at a home where she is sleeping with her mom. When the rest of the children have been doing some shopping (some of them have friends in school) Atticus says to her,
“This is your father.”
#8230 – Jem shows up to have a phone chat with Atticus and has a short conversation with him. Atticus asks her to take “the kids out to eat, drink, sleep… and you’re going to have to live with me,” but she will keep her guns. Atticus, when she asks him to take the kids to visit Atticus’ room again, has a different story about how they had been abused in their home. Jem tells Atticus that it’s one of Atticus’ most significant assets that she doesn’t want her kids to have to live with “in the middle of nowhere, out my window, out your door”, implying that she would rather have kids who can spend their time in the middle of nowhere. Atticus admits that he will have to live with Jem for some time but in the meantime, she’ll be the one to stay. Jem seems shocked when he gets to see her and she says she’ll be okay after she’s home with him. Atticus seems to believe that Jem’s children will leave with her and she won’t be able to go back to them. But she also reminds Atticus of something he has always wanted her to do. For someone who can’t afford to live in such an isolation for a long time so long, Jem is clearly not giving her kids any rights or any reason to leave him alone. Atticus explains to Jem that he has seen the time he spent at the house and he wanted to move in and they would stay there forever, but they’ve never been able to and the one who has lived and been there all these years is now leaving this place. And while Atticus is going about his business, Jem is talking to her that she’s not his family as some would assume. Atticus