Atticus Finch

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Why are people scared to change the way they are for the better? This question is explored in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. A young girl, Scout, is exposed to this in a small town called Maycomb, a place no one’s heard of in southern Alabama. She lives with her father, Atticus Finch, and brother, Jem, as well as their maid Calpurnia. Atticus has constantly been criticized on his upbringing of Scout and Jem, but it was one of minimal sugar-coating and is ultimately for their greater good. Atticus is a lawyer, and the main case he works on in this book is one of rape by a black man on a white woman. The time period lends nothing positive to this case, being set in the 1930s. Even though there was substantial evidence to prove …show more content…
The guards, once again showing the masked discrimination of the town, shot and killed him with an excess amount of bullets, dissipating any sense of hope for the black man’s family or Atticus. The fact that Atticus willingly defended a black man rewarded him with many enemies, including the ‘white trash’ that falsely testified with no punishment. The man, Bob Ewell, goes after Scout and Jem one night after a school play, aiming to kill them and take what was nearest to Atticus. Jem’s arm is broken, but the skirmish is stopped before further damage by the notorious nut job Boo Radley, the man rumored to never have come out of his house in 25 years. All evidence points to the fact that Boo stabbed Ewell, but the sheriff is determined to cover it up for the murderer’s sake - there’s no point in calling attention to a man that will never show his face again. Scout then walks Boo back to his house, making it her first and last confrontation with him. Returning to her own house, she begins the rest of her tainted life in Maycomb. A closely related book written in modern times also pokes at this fundamental question of life, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle …show more content…
This is called ‘upholding tradition’, but is it really acceptable to uphold tradition if others are being sacrificed for its success? Many traditional people keep up with old habits to honor their ancestors, or maybe because they fear the consequences of disobedience. This applies even to Maycomb county, a town borne out of the truth in someone’s mind. The racists were keeping up with the South’s old tradition of oppressing and abusing black people, and would stop at nothing to get their way for the sake of the good old days. This ties into the title, “to kill a mockingbird”. The textbook definition of this saying is ‘to hurt someone who has done no wrong’, presumably because they ‘mocked’ someone else’s actions. This makes sense in the context of the book, as Boo merely copied Bob Ewell’s actions of violence. The sheriff of Maycomb refused to punish Boo, saying that “all the ladies in Maycomb includin’ my wife’d be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight - to me, that’s a sin” (Lee, 317). To bring attention to Boo would be unjust, as he copied Bob Ewell and possibly the town’s hatred of Bob Ewell; why acknowledge a copycat? New generations are
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