Examples Of Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Birds of Innocence


According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, mockingbirds are slender-bodied gray birds who pour all their color into their personalities, and sing almost endlessly, even at night. They are also a very significant and symbolic bird species used in literature. For example, in Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, a mockingbird symbolizes innocence and harmlessness. Therefore, harming a mockingbird in any way, shape, or form shows destruction of this innocence. In Atticus’s words, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” because as Miss Maudie clarifies, “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 …show more content…

Tom has been wrecked by injustice and prejudice and Scout makes a valid point that, “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” simply because he was a black (323). There was nothing else to it other than the color of his skin and racial background. As a result, Tom was accused of raping a white girl and had no other choice than to attend his trial and hope for the best even though the final verdict was quite palpable. Once at court, Tom Robinson testified that he helped Mayella with day to day chores quite often, free of charge. His reason for doing so was because he felt, “right sorry for her” (264). This affirmation gave Mr. Glimmer an opportunity to take advantage of Tom’s words and use them against him since a black man feeling sorry for a white girl just wasn’t acceptable. This caused so much commotion in the courtroom that many of the folks soon forgot what Tom had testified seconds before in response to Mayella’s yearn for intimate actions. In reply to Atticus’s question, “Did you resist her advances?”, Tom said, “Mr. Finch I tried. I tried to ‘thout bein’ ugly to her. I didn’t want to be ugly, I didn’t want to push her or nothin’” (260). These very words portray a true mockingbird who, so to speak, would never raise anything but his voice in a quarrel. They portray a mockingbird believes that words are stronger than

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