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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Good Essays

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee and published in 1960. It was a very successful book, winning the Pulitzer Prize and becoming a modern American classic. Ostensibly, the title of To Kill a Mockingbird has scant literary connection to the plot of the story, but the recurring mockingbird motif symbolizes the innocent and good characters in this novel. Miss Maudie explains to Scout why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Your father’s right. Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” To Kill a Mockingbird likens three characters, Tom Robinson, Arthur “Boo” Radley, and Atticus Finch, to mockingbirds.
Tom Robinson is the most easily identifiable mockingbird in this story. Although he is a peaceful, respectful man who helps Mayella Ewell without asking for anything in return, he is falsely accused and dies tragically as a result. Mr. Underwood, Maycomb’s newspaper editor, likens Tom’s death to the “senseless slaughter of innocent songbirds by hunters and children” in the editorial he writes immediately after the Negro’s death. As shooting a mockingbird results in the loss of a sweet song-maker, the death of Tom brings no good fruit—it only satisfies the destructive racial prejudice of the South. Tom is also targeted for the same reasons that mockingbirds are targeted

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