Use of the Mockingbird Motif in To Kill a Mockingbird

How Harper Lee uses the Mockingbird motif

"To Kill A Mockingbird" has a main theme of prejudice and the

persecution of innocent and harmless individuals. The main themes of

this book very much link in with the title, which is explained by

Harper Lee through Atticus and Miss Maudie (pg 96.) Miss Maudie

explains - "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to

enjoy. They don't one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's

why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. This is the first obvious

reference to the title of the book and the mockingbird motif. The

message Harper Lee is trying to convey through Miss Maudie is that

it's wrong to kill a mockingbird because they never do anything to

harm anything or anyone, and it really is a sin to harm something that

has never committed a crime or hurt anyone. I think Harper Lee intends

the reader to apply this to people as well. The mockingbird represents

the innocent people in the book who have never done anything wrong but

are persecuted just for being different (the two main examples being

Tom Robinson for being black and "Boo" Radley for living in solitude.)

We see this prejudice through the eyes of an innocent child who is

seeing it all for the first time. This is crucial to the reader's

perception and understanding of what is going on in the book, as the

child has not yet been corrupted by the prejudice and is seeing

everything for what it really is. At the beginning of the book the

children are all quite naïve and guileless, but as the book progresses

we see them growing up and learning about the world and the people

around them. I think they learn three main lessons by the end of the

book. The first is that people (and in particular, the people in

Maycomb) do not all have the same ideals as them, or as Atticus - for

instance they learn that many of the people of Maycomb are prejudiced

and hypocritical (even the cream of Maycomb society, who discuss the

help they must give to poor, persecuted black people outside Maycomb,

only to go on to make thoroughly unsavoury comments about the black

people living right under their noses - see page 236-240.) The second

is empathy, to walk around in someone else's shoes and see things from

their perspective - the lesson that their father seems most keen that

they learn. Scout has only fully learnt this lesson at the end of the

book, page 285, when she says, "Atticus was right.