To Kill A Mockingbird Innocence

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee focuses mainly on innocence throughout the novel, the mockingbird came to represent the idea of innocence. Killing a mockingbird means a loss of innocence I the eyes of the reader. Throughout the book many of the characters can be identified as mockingbirds. Jem, Scout, Dill, and Boo all lost their innocence as they grew up in a town such as Maycomb. Tom Robinson is another example of a mockingbird in this book because of the injustices he faces being a colored man in Maycomb. The intention of this essay is to identify the characters and their reasons for losing their innocence throughout the book. Scout is an example of a mockingbird. She is an innocent five-year old child who has never had …show more content…
Unfortunately for Tom he lived in Maycomb, a rather racist town, and he was far too nice to white people that treated him terribly. “ Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (Lee, 244). Even Scout knew and she was only six. It seemed that everyone in town knew, including Tom, the outcome of this trial. The only people who did not know that Tom Robinson would be convicted where the children, innocence is shown through age. “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it-seems that only children weep” (Lee, 215). This shows how morally grounded Atticus is, he knows that his client is innocent and that he is only being prosecuted for his skin color. The reason that only children will be weeping is because they have yet to be corrupted in their views, especially their views when it comes to right and wrong. Children have not yet learned to “see color” and treat someone who is not the same color as them with disrespect. Unfortunately that is a learned trait that only older people seem to have absorbed. Tom knew what his fate was from the start, which is why he took off running; he knew that if he were caught in a situation like that he would be hanged. So when the jury found him guilty he felt that there was only one way out and that was on his own. He was not going to let …show more content…
Even though he knew what he was going up against he was still hoping that maybe with all of the evidence shown that they would choose justice over racism. During the trial you can see the toll it was taking on him, he knew that Tom was set up for a loss, yet he still had hopes for the citizens of Maycomb, just like his young children. Atticus’s task was to make a young white girl seem like the monster, and to prove the innocence of an older black man, and in a place like Maycomb it did not matter how innocent Tom was, he was black. Him being black was enough for Maycomb to turn a blind eye on all of the facts, and even on Bob Ewell, who might have been the most disturbing character of all. He was uneducated and the status of his family was not highly regarded, and he abused his children. When he saw the opportunity to put the abuse on someone else he figured who else then the man that my daughter was trying to seduce, who also happened to be black. Ewell took advantage of how racist Maycomb was and knew that the trial would go his