Benjamin Hudok
Honors English 10B
Vande-Guchte
5/15/23
To Kill a Mockingbird, Symbols of Foreshadowing essay
To Kill A Mockingbird is a story angled towards fueling the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Author, Harper Lee, loosely based her story off of the trial of the Scottsboro boys in the early 1930’s. The real life trial had depicted 2 white girls who accused 9 black boys of assaulting them, despite there being no evidence the 9 boys were sentenced to life in prison even after the girls had admitted the allegations were fake. She was inspired by her father’s writings in newspapers and time as a lawyer in Alabama because of the ideas he expressed in regards to the blatant racism in the Scottsboro Boys trial. It was this inspiration
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Lee is referred to as Scout throughout the book with her father being depicted as a character by the name of Atticus Finch and her brother being Jem Finch. The interpretation of the trial itself is altered to be based around an African-American man named Tom Robinson, and the false allegations of him assaulting a white woman and his unlawful execution under incarceration. In her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee uses the symbolic significance of a Snowman, the Mad Dog, and a Mockingbird to foreshadow the events of an unjust trial in her novel.
Harper Lee incorporates the symbolic significance of a Snowman to illustrate the institutionalized racism in the Southern U.S and foreshadow the treatment of Tom Robinson throughout the book. The Snowman itself appears in the story as first constructed of dirt and then covered with snow. The snowman is described when the narrator
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The Mockingbird is told in the story to be the one bird that has no wrongful intent and does nothing but sing for people. Singing in the distant background, It makes a physical appearance to foreshadow an attempt of a murder of Scout’s innocence. Atticus himself establishes the basis for the significance of the Mockingbird when he says “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people's gardens, they don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird”(Lee 119). This quote provides the symbolism of the Mockingbird as being innocence and innocent. Different characters in the story are deemed to be Mockingbirds as they had suffered despite their innocence. Brilliantly, the Mockingbird title is represented by a character’s name within the book, characters such as Atticus and Scout Finch as well as Tom Robinson have the names of birds within their names to symbolize that they are a Mockingbird. Harper Lee uses this idea of a character as a mockingbird to foreshadow that something will happen to kill them or their innocence. Later on in the book the death of a Mockingbird takes place. The death of Tom Robinson is revealed to the reader when a townsperson says “Tom’s dead…, They shot him,... He was running during
I think that the mockingbirds represent two characters in the book, who are Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Tom Robinson is a man with a loving family who was convicted of raping a teenager. All the evidence points to him being innocent, yet he is still convicted and sent to jail. Then he ends up getting shot at for trying to escape. This is a good example of a mockingbird in the book, because Tom Robinson was an innocent man, yet
The death of an innocent is foreshadowed in the title of the book–To Kill A Mockingbird. As the story continues, we learn that Tom Robinson is the innocent who is killed. After his trial, he is to be put to death by an electric chair, but Atticus is trying to get an appeal for him where they can prove his innocence and save his life. Before this is possible, however, Atticus comes home and tells his sister, Alexandra, Calpurnia, and Scout that Tom has been killed. He says, “He was running.
In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee uses Snow, the Snowman, and White Camellias to foreshadow further events in the book. To begin, Harper Lee uses Snow to foreshadow Tom’s
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the Mockingbird is the main symbol in the story representing how the loss of innocence influences Scout Finch and the society she sees. With the story, To Kill a Mockingbird is to destroy innocence. This shows how evil and the realization of the truth can truly show society the cruel nature of what they do. Without this realization society will become blind of their actions and negligent.
He basically tells the kids that mockingbirds are harmless and they don’t do anything wrong , so there should be no reason to kill one. The “mockingbird” is a very important symbol in the book because it relates to actual characters in the book. I believe that the symbol in the story means that even if someone doing no harm to others can still somehow end up hurt , or even dead.
Innocence is destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus by killing a mockingbird you are killing the innocence of one. In “How to Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, a metaphor, a sign of a mockingbird keeps on coming up and being said throughout the novel. Many people may wonder, what does the mockingbird mean? Well throughout the novel Atticus brings up the mockingbird and so does Ms. Maudie, the two moral compasses in the novel the girl and guy versions.
Later Scout asks Mrs. Maudie, the Finch's next-door neighbor, about what Atticus said and she explains, “Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us” (Lee 103). This means mockingbirds directly symbolize innocents, when Mrs. Maudie says they don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs she means they don't do anything wrong. So it would be a sin to kill something or someone that is innocent. Later in the book after Tom Robinson is found guilty even though Atticus proves his innocence beyond responsible doubt and it is shown to the courtroom that Bob Ewell is the true perpetrator.
This illustrates that his answer wasn't good enough and everyone already knew what the outcome was gonna be. Tom is charged of rape and he is found guilty because he is a black man. Tom is killed trying to leave prison because he knows that nothing will save him, he would rather die than live in a prison. The killing of Tom Robinson is a sin played by the racist southern
Even though Scout’s father Atticus makes an incredibly strong case in the defense of Tom Robinson, Tom is still found guilty and sent to prison. Awaiting an appeal in jail, Tom is shot 17 times and killed under suspicious circumstances. Previously in the novel this event was foreshadowed by the appearance of a supposedly rabid or “mad” dog killed by Atticus. Scout narrates, “In front of the Radley gate, Tim Johnson had made up what was left of his mind. He had finally turned himself around, to pursue his original course up our street…With movements so swift they seemed simultaneous, Atticus's hand yanked a ball-tipped lever as he brought the gun to his shoulder.
Although all the evidence pointed to Tom Robinson being innocent and the only witnesses were from unreliable and changing sources he was still convicted. This is a depiction of the death of a Mockingbird, ultimately destroying innocence and purity that resided with Tom Robinson that died when he was shot as he tried to flee from his inescapable doom. Mr. Underwood, the publisher of Maycomb 's newspaper as well as a respected all of Atticus, sadly compares Tom 's death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds...” (pg.244) stating another reference to the ever-present mockingbird
In her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee masterfully uses the symbolic significance of the snowman, the mad dog, and the white camilla flower to foreshadow events that occur later in the novel. To begin, Harper Lee uses the snowman to foreshadow how an innocent black man’s story is covered up and forgotten. Excited, Scout and Jem see snow for the first time. They decide to build a snowman with all the snow they can find.
They are innocent creatures who one shouldn’t harm, but appreciate the songs they sing. Besides the mocking bird symbolizing innocence the title also means “to kill innocence”. The town is full of corrupting ideas that the novel refers to Scout as an innocent mockingbird that the towns bad influence kills the childhood innocence. This creates empathy within the reader to understand the innocence of these creatures and to become in favor of the beauty that lies in the
(Lee 119). Symbolically throughout To Kill a Mockingbird a mockingbird represents pure goodness and innocence, but that innocence dies when corrupted by evil. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, several characters are representative mockingbirds. Tom Robinson, a Negro client of Atticus Finch’s, who was accused
In the story, the innocents are destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Such as when Atticus says “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit'em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (103). Another example could be when Boo stabs Bob Ewell to save Jem and Scout, which sheriff Tate decides to say that Mr.Ewell fell on the knife, so Boo won’t have to go to court.
Mockingbirds are an important symbol because they represent goodness and innocence. In this book, Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are two innocent men, similar to mockingbirds, who get taken advantage of due to their innocence. Atticus and Miss Maudie teach Scout and Jem that it’s a sin to harm anything innocent by using the example of mockingbirds. Mockingbirds are innocent because they only positively affect people through their singing.