To Kill A Mockingbird Innocence Quotes

Loss of Innocence
“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." A quote from the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the hardships of growing up and seeing the world around you being controlled by prejudice and racism. Lee implies that innocence is not seen as the assumption that people are naturally good but is more of a mature perspective gained from facing immorality.
Throughout the book we watch the narrator, Scout Finch, go from a naive first grader that think Maycomb is the best place out there, to finally maturing and understanding the world around her. Throughout the book Scout is impressioned by so many people that Boo Radley is a monster that should be kept in at all times. Later we learn he isn’t, but one of the first impressions we get from him is a brute

description from Scout’s brother, Jem. “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten, his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”(Lee 13) Having heard only heard about him from neighbors this was one of the only times Scout could truly try to see who he was. This description of him caused Scout to think Boo Radley was a monster and throughout the entire book, torment him.
a It wasn’t up until the very end where Scout really showed how much she matured about Boo Radley. At the end of the book, Jem and Scout where walking home when they were attacked by the town drunk, Mr.Ewell. It wasn’t until later when she learned Boo Radley saved \\her and Jem from being killed. “Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”(lee 278) In this quote Scout showed her loss of innocence by realizing that Boo was just a human that was tormented and messed with all his life, and how he didn’t deserve it.
Tom Robinson, a good man, with a wife and a family.

He was a black man, accused of raping a white women. The Tom Robinson trial was a true trial of good versus evil. Scout’s father was chosen to defend Tom in his trial and tried his hardest providing with all the information that Tom was a innocent man. He fought, “The witness for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption that one associates with minds of their calibre.”(Lee 205) At this point in Atticus’ closing speech he and just about everybody else in that courtroom knew Tom Robinson was innocent. The evidence just did not match up with what was presented. Though Tom was innocent, the jury didn’t look past the color of his skin, so was sentenced to

death.
Throughout the novel, innocence is symbolized by mockingbirds. One of the symbolized mockingbirds is Boo Radley. Atticus Finch says it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, really meaning it's immoral to hurt an innocent person. Although he is innocent, he is threatened by evil. When he was younger he was said to have had stabbed his parents in the legs. After that he was sent somewhere and then returned to his house never to be seen again. Later in the book when Mr. Ewell was found dead by being stabbed, we realize it was Boo. Sheriff Tate knows that but keeps it to himself knowing that it would just rectify the rumors against him.