What Is The Theme Of Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

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The novel To Kill a Mockingbird has many themes. One theme, innocence and its coexistence with evil, manifests itself in the symbol of a mockingbird throughout the novel. There are many characters in the story that are used to portray the characteristics of a mockingbird, but two in particular stand out as great examples of this theme. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and his father, Atticus, exemplify symbolic mockingbirds because of their innocence, capacity to bring joy to others and being frequent targets of undeserved violence.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem is a symbolic mockingbird in at least three different ways. First, early in Jem’s life, his mother dies due to a heart attack. He did not deserve this tragedy,yet he endured it anyway. Undeserved emotional violence is a trait of the mockingbird that he shows when he stoically deals with his mother’s early death. Secondly, after the verdict of the Tom Robinson case, Jem shows his innocence by saying, “‘Atticus’-said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway. ‘What, son?’ ‘How could they do it, how could they?’” (285). Jem feels sympathy for Tom because he is too innocent to even understand the way that racism impacted the trial of Tom Robinson. The Finch family is one of few Southern families that refuses to buy into the ideology of racism, so Jem cannot comprehend the kind of hate that
Two main protagonists, Jem and Atticus, represent the pure goodness of a mockingbird because they are innocent, bring joy to others and receive undeserved violence. With the presence of these characters whose goodness mirrors that of a mockingbird, Harper Lee is arguing that even in a community such as Maycomb that has so much racism and bigotry, goodness can coexist with evil. In this tragic story in which the innocent character of Tom Robinson is unfairly killed, there is insurgent hope in the goodness of people like Jem and Atticus

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