“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
These are the words uttered by Martin Luther King Jr. as he fought for racial equality in his cell at the Birmingham County Jail. This famous quote is a perfect example of the common belief that justice is always synonymous with fairness. In contrary, what’s considered right and wrong usually go hand in hand- it is just a matter of perspective. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the character Arthur “Boo” Radley is affected by the fact that extreme justice is often extreme injustice.
From the very start, Boo was viewed as a shady character even by the standards of Maycomb, who was a victim of the ideals of “justice”. One of the ways his life was changed by these principles was through punishment. Boo was under house-arrest from a young age …show more content…
Shaken, his father believed that locking Boo in a asylum would attract attention to him and the family. So instead, Boo was given a “justified” punishment and was locked in his house for the rest of his life. Cutting off communication from the outside led the townsfolk of Maycomb to assume that Boo was some sort of savage being who “ate raw squirrels”(16) and had “bloodstained hands with rotten yellow teeth”(16). Boo’s father’s justification for locking Boo away was, in fact, counterproductive. Instead of deflecting attention away from Boo as intended, all “justice” did in this case was make him a human magnet for rumors and slander. The towns’ sudden attention in Boo contrasts his personality of shyness and loneliness, causing him to believe that his quiet home was the safest place. According to Jem, the reason why Boo Radley stayed shut up in his house was “because he want[s] to stay inside”(304). The “merciful” punishment that Boo’s father unwittingly gave him was just as potent
These are the words uttered by Martin Luther King Jr. as he fought for racial equality in his cell at the Birmingham County Jail. This famous quote is a perfect example of the common belief that justice is always synonymous with fairness. In contrary, what’s considered right and wrong usually go hand in hand- it is just a matter of perspective. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the character Arthur “Boo” Radley is affected by the fact that extreme justice is often extreme injustice.
From the very start, Boo was viewed as a shady character even by the standards of Maycomb, who was a victim of the ideals of “justice”. One of the ways his life was changed by these principles was through punishment. Boo was under house-arrest from a young age …show more content…
Shaken, his father believed that locking Boo in a asylum would attract attention to him and the family. So instead, Boo was given a “justified” punishment and was locked in his house for the rest of his life. Cutting off communication from the outside led the townsfolk of Maycomb to assume that Boo was some sort of savage being who “ate raw squirrels”(16) and had “bloodstained hands with rotten yellow teeth”(16). Boo’s father’s justification for locking Boo away was, in fact, counterproductive. Instead of deflecting attention away from Boo as intended, all “justice” did in this case was make him a human magnet for rumors and slander. The towns’ sudden attention in Boo contrasts his personality of shyness and loneliness, causing him to believe that his quiet home was the safest place. According to Jem, the reason why Boo Radley stayed shut up in his house was “because he want[s] to stay inside”(304). The “merciful” punishment that Boo’s father unwittingly gave him was just as potent