Foil

Tom Robinson/Boo Radley

At first glance, Tom and Boo seem very different: one lives with his wife and children among friends, the other lives in isolation with his taciturn brother. One has his fellow churchgoers take up a collection on his behalf, while the other has no one think much about him except some curious kids. But dig deeper, and Tom and Boo start to look more similar: both are disabled in some way (Tom’s crippled arm, Boo’s crippling shyness), both are innocents with a bad reputation, and both are compared to mockingbirds. Perhaps most tellingly, Tom and Boo both serve as scapegoats for their community, being blamed for things they didn’t do. As foils, they reveal less about each other than about the community they live in, and suggest that the people a community includes say less about it than those whom it excludes.