Lessons Learned In To Kill A Mockingbird

Words: 666
Pages: 3

o Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, features a young girl named Scout who grows up in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1930s. The novel was written by Lee in the 1960s, during a time period in which prejudice was common. The main character, Scout, lives next door to a recluse man named Boo Radley. One of the main conflicts of the story is finding the truth about Boo Radley. The narrow-minded townspeople in the novel have made many false speculations of Boo, stating that he murdered his mother, eats raw animals, and sneaks around at night. Atticus, Scout’s loving and caring father, teaches her many valuable lessons that pertains to the rumors behind mysterious Boo Radley. Scout matures throughout the novel as she applies the lessons Atticus taught her to uncover the truth about Boo Radley, converse to the prejudice surrounding him. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus teaches Scout a valuable lesson about compassion. …show more content…
When Scout received an air rifle for Christmas, Atticus told her “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (119). Later in the novel, Scout and her brother Jem are attacked by a man named Bob Ewell when walking home one night. Boo Radley comes to the rescue and saves Scout and Jem by killing Bob Ewell with a knife. When the sheriff investigates the attack, he reasons with Atticus that Bob Ewell killed himself by falling on his knife. Atticus asks Scout if she understood that he fell on his knife in which she responds, “Well it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” (370). Scout’s response shows that she finally understands Atticus’ lesson: if the townspeople learned that Boo Radley was a hero, he would be robbed of his privacy, thus being punished for doing something good. By comprehending Atticus’ lesson of destroying one’s innocence, Scout shows she has