Boo Radley Stereotypes

Many people say the depravity of telling children about the heavy topics of the world, such as war, gives children biased and stereotyped views of the world and how it works. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, she uses many characters such as Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and an eccentric man named Arthur “Boo” Radley to show how the stereotypes of people can crush innocence. Harper Lee uses the first person point of view of Scout, a young mischievous girl, and the anomaly of Boo Radley, to convey the idea of the heavy topic of bias and stereotypes to address the harms of destroying the innocence of a person. Through Scout’s and Boo’s experiences, Lee is able to suggest that society has an obligation to look past stereotypes and judge a person not based on things such as appearance.

Scout, the adventurous and wondrous eight year old narrator, has to live with being the daughter of a lawyer who is supporting a black man. After her father was being called a “nigger-defender” by a boy at school named Cecil, Scout asks Atticus, “Why did Cecil say you defended niggers? He made it sound like you were runnin’ a still” (Lee 62). It is made obvious that Scout is not aware of how or why the boy came to that conclusion, when in the end, neither does the boy himself. Though, through the reader’s previous knowledge of prejudice and racism, they can come to the conclusion that the town is littered with gossip. This shows how society can ruin a child’s innocence by corrupting the mind with talk that has no reason to prove why they believe in what they