702 Lee, Harper
situation is all the more tenuous in light of Boo
Radley, or worse, Mayella Ewell, for they are adults
whose lives went horribly awry due to thwarted
childhoods.
Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell serve as the
two main plot points of To Kill a Mockingbird;
Boo’s story is the overarching narrative that frames
Scout’s story, with Mayella’s tragic encounter with
Tom Robinson—and Atticus’s heroic defense of
Tom—nestled within this larger story. Mayella
Ewell is a teenager on the verge of womanhood,
the daughter of Bob Ewell, an angry man who lives
near the city garbage dump and does not value
education. His children have a history of attend-
ing only the first day of class, lice-ridden and surly.
Scout does not know much else about the Ewell
children, but during the trial recognizes that May-
ella is starved for attention. Her desperate need for
human contact pushes her to clumsily seduce Tom
Robinson, a handicapped black man who is later
accused of raping Mayella. She is but one example
in To Kill a Mockingbird of the consequences of a
childhood gone wrong.
Likewise, Boo Radley suffers from overzealous
parents. Derogatorily called “foot-washers” (those
of the Baptist faith who interpret the Bible literally)
by some members of the Maycomb community, the
Radley parents have overprotected Boo his entire
life, effectively isolating him from the rest of the
community. As a result of not knowing (or seeing)
him, the Finch children and Dill believe Boo is
more monster than human, letting their imagina-
tion get the better of them. The truth of the matter,
as Scout later discovers, is that Boo lives vicariously
through the Finch children. He begins by leaving
small tokens of affection, such as chewing gum and
a broken pocket watch, within the hollow of an oak
tree for the children to find. Later, Boo places a
blanket on Scout’s shoulders on one of the coldest
nights in Maycomb’s history. Boo’s affection and
protection of the children culminates when he stabs
Bob Ewell, who attempts to enact revenge against
Atticus, who he believes has humiliated him beyond
repair during Tom Robinson’s trial. Boo, who did
not have a childhood in which he had loving par-
ents to care for him, cannot help but lovingly watch
over Scout and Jem.
Ultimately, it takes the death of Bob Ewell at
the hands of Boo Radley for Scout to understand
that terrible things may befall children even when
they have loving parents. Even Atticus, the stalwart
representation of reason and justice in To Kill a
Mockingbird, is astonished at Bob Ewell’s brazen
attempt to kill two innocent children. Lee’s novel
takes the nostalgic idea of a carefree childhood and
razes it with carefully crafted representations of
characters whose childhoods withered on the vine,
affording Scout the opportunity to cherish and
appreciate her own.
Chris GonzalezJuStice in To Kill a Mockingbird
There are few characters in literature that embody
moral uprightness and human kindness as much as
Atticus Finch, attorney and father of the narrator
of To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout Finch often turns
to her father for an explanation of the confusing
ways of the world, and Atticus unhesitatingly does
so with patience. He is a character who represents
fairness and an unwillingness to compromise his
ethics no matter how difficult the situation may
be. As a child, Scout’s sense of justice seems to favor
a physical imposition upon those who offend her.
Indeed, Scout’s outspokenness is fueled by her abil-
ity to back it up with her fists, something she later
resists because it disappoints Atticus.
The concept of justice is difficult for anyone
to grapple with, let alone a child. Yet Atticus has a
penchant for explaining complex ideas in a manner
his children can comprehend, as in his dictum for
shooting birds. “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if
you can hit ‘em,” he tells his children, “but remember
it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Thus, Atticus gives
Scout her most important lesson on justice, as the
title of the novel indicates. The mockingbird repre-
sents a creature whose sole existence is to bring some
goodness to the world through the songs it sings. To
kill a mockingbird is an injustice of the worst kind.
Additionally, the two characters analogous to the
mockingbird are Boo Radley and Tom Robinson.
Handicapped due to an accident with a cotton
gin, Tom also has the misfortune of having to pass
by the Ewell house twice daily on his way to and
from the cotton fields where he works. Mayella