Atticus Sacrifice In To Kill A Mockingbird

Imagine you are a father with two kids that have no mother and you are trying to protect them while you are risking your life helping others. In Harper Lee’s novel, To kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Atticus is a father with two kids named Jem and Scout who are growing up in a world where racism is big. Atticus decides to defend a person of color named Tom who was accused of rape. Defending a person of color is a big risk for Atticus because if people get angry at him for doing it and hurt him there would be no one to protect his kids because they have no mother. Mark Twain and Andrew Cockburn also say some things that say why Atticus did something or what he has to put up with. Some main themes in To Kill a Mockingbird are love and sacrifice,

how family can be both a blessing and a curse, and the pain and pleasures of growing up.
Love and sacrifice is shown a lot in To Kill a Mockingbird.

In To Kill a Mockingbird on page 203, Atticus goes to Tom’s jail to protect him from a mob and Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill come. Mark Twain writes in, Lynching Moral Cowardice, “No mob has any sand in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave” (Twain 1). Atticus is being brave and standing up against a mob, even though they could kill him making it so Jem and Scout have no parents. Atticus tries to tell the kids to go, not wanting them to get hurt by the mob, but the kids stay wanting to help Atticus. Atticus does what he thinks is right, risking his life and he doesn’t want want his kids that he loves to get hurt. Jem and Scout love Atticus so they risk their life to help him and not leave the mob to himself. They all are sacrificing their lives by helping each other. Atticus loses the jury, and after Jem wonders why they lost and Atticus tells him why. In To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus says “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it-whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash” (Lee 295). Atticus tells Jem something that he believes in and he wants Jem to believe it too. Other people will not like people who think like that because they think differently. They will think that others should think like them because

they are right. Atticus loves Jem and he wants him to know what he thinks is right. This could affect Jem when he is older, or even when he is still a child. Just defending Tom in court risks Jem and Scout’s life. In To Kill a Mockingbird Jem and Scout were told “...Mr.Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of his life” (Lee 290). Bob Ewell won the jury he is angry at Atticus because during the jury everyone learned that he treated his kids poorly. Everyone thinks that he is going to kill Atticus, wich would make Jem and Scout have no parents, but he doesn’t try and kill Atticus. Insted Bob Ewell goes and tries to kill Atticus’ kids. He broke Jem’s arm but doesn’t do anything else to them before he falls on his knife and dies. Atticus, loving his kids, is happy that they are both alive and is happy that his kids weren't the ones that killed Bob Ewell. Atticus does what he think is the right thing to do, but a lot of it puts his kids lives in danger. He loves his kids, but not everyone loves their kids as much as he does.
In To Kill a Mockingbird it is shown that families can be both a blessing and a curse.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus loves his children and he needs to protect them from the outside world. In an article by Andrew Cockburn it says, “..to stop the selling of people, because each of those girls is someone’s child” (Cockburn 1). That article was talking about what happens today. People have been using people for slaves for a long time. They take people’s kids and use them as slaves. Someone like Atticus tries to protect his kids from bad people that might want to hurt them. He even tries to protect them from what people tell them. Not everyone has a good parent like Atticus. Mayella Violet Ewell has a father that doesn’t love any of his kids. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus tells Scout about Mr. Ewell and he says, “... when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains” (Lee 41). Mayella isn’t the only child Mr. Ewell has. All of his children go to school for one day eaver year and don’t go again. Because of the life Mayella has, she has no friends, but Tom Robinson, who would go to her house and do work for her, and be the only person that would talk to her. When Mayella shows her love to Tom by hugging and kissing him Tom tries to get out, knowing what would happen to him if someone found Mayella hugging him. When Tom leaves, Mr Ewell beats up his own daughter because he had she what she had done. Atticus isn’t the

only one that loves his family and has a family that loves him back. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom tells the jury what happened one night and he talks about what Mayella said to him. He says, “I say where the chillun?[...]she says they all gone to town to get ice creams. She says, ‘took me a slap year to save seb’m nickels, but I done it” (Lee 258). Even though Mayella has a bad father that doesn't treat her well, she still takes care of her siblings. Mayella and her family have no food to eat so getting ice cream is a big treat. Mayella is the oldest of the siblings so she has to do all the work that her father gives her. Mayella gets work or she sits on her porch every day with no friends to play with, and the other kids get to play with each other. Even though Mayella could’ve used her money to buy something for herself, she gave it to her siblings so they could have a treat. Families can be both good and bad, and some of they affect how someone has grown up.
Growing up can be both a pain and a pleasure. Throughout the whole book, Jem and Scout grow up. Every day Jem and Scout would walk past a tree that had a hole with something inside of it. One day the tree was filled with cement so nothing could go inside of it. In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Jem and Scout find out that the tree was filled with cement Jem tells Scout, “Don’t you cry, now, Scout . . . don’t cry now, don’t you worry-” (Lee 83). Jem tells Scout not to cry, but he is telling himself that. He doesn’t want to cry because he feels that the tree was a fun part of his childhood and now it is gone. Jem knows that Scout also likes the tree so he tells her to no cry even though he is telling himself so he doesn’t cry in front of her. Jem doesn’t want to cry in front of Scout because he is growing up. The tree was a big part of their childhood and it was taken away from them. Mayella never really had a childhood because of her father, and growing up didn’t make her life any better. In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Tom is talking to the jury he says, “She says she never kissed a grown man before [...] She says what her papa do to her don’t count” (Lee 260). Mayella didn’t grow up with any friends and not that many people that cared for her. Mayella doesn’t know how people act towards others because she hasn’t been around that many people. Now that Mayella is more grown up, her father might want to rape and abuse her more. She might of even been raped and abused when she was a child. There can be some good things about growing up, and one of them is how kids think about things. In To Kill a Mockingbird, after Tom lost the trail, Jem says to Atticus, “How could they do it, how could they?” (Lee 285). When Tom lost the trail lots of people were happy. Everyone liked that the black person lost and the white person won. Jem was thinking for himself and didn’t like it that Tom lost. He wasn’t thinking what others were thinking because he thought that the others were right. In the court it was obvious that Tom was not guilty but the people said he was guilty because of his skin color. Jem thought what the people did was not right because it was obvious that Tom should be free, not because others said so. Growing up can be bad because of the things kids can lose, or the people they have to be with, but it can be good because it makes kids think differently than they did when they were younger.
To Kill a Mockingbird shows that family can be a big thing in life and it can affect how kids can feel about the people they love and people in their everyday life. Families can make it so kids have a fun childhood, that they don’t want to leave, or an awful childhood, that makes their life lonely when they are older. People in families can hurt their children on purpose or by accident. They can teach each other what they think is important and try to make them have their own ideas. Families can always be there for each other, even if they have to risk their lives.