To Kill a Mockingbird

Mockingbirds

The title of the book is To Kill a Mockingbird, so mockingbirds must be important, right? But why? Let’s look at a few passages to try to figure out some answers to that question.

Mockingbirds first appear when Jem and Scout are learning how to use their shiny new air rifles. Atticus won’t teach them how to shoot, but he does give them one rule to follow.

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

"Your father's right," she said. "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. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." (10.7)

So, mockingbirds are harmless, innocent creatures, and killing them is wrong, because they don’t hurt anyone. (The same could be said for cows, but hamburgers are so tasty, while mockingbirds presumably aren’t.) But is this lesson so important in itself that it’s worth putting it front and center on the cover of the book? There must be more going on here.

Mr. Underwood’s editorial after the death of Tom Robinson doesn’t mention mockingbirds by name, but it does have a similar message.

Mr. Underwood didn't talk about miscarriages of justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he was trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in The Montgomery Advertiser. (25.27)

Mr. Underwood may be trying to get through to even the stupidest residents of Maycomb, but his editorial also makes sure that every reader gets the connection: the mockingbird and Tom are in the same class of beings. But what’s the reason for bringing the bird and the man together? Mr. Underwood says it’s because of Tom’s disability, though it’s unclear why he thinks that makes a difference (perhaps it’s along the lines of "women and children first": those thought to be weak should receive special protection). Perhaps Tom’s innocence of the crime he’s accused of makes him similar to the mockingbird who does no harm to anyone. Or perhaps it’s the senselessness that’s really key: killing Tom brought about no good and prevented no evil, just like shooting a mockingbird.

The idea of killing a mockingbird turns up once more in the book, when Scout is telling Atticus she understands about not dragging Boo into court.

Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. "Yes sir, I understand," I reassured him. "Mr. Tate was right."

Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?" (30.66-68)

Stories of poisoned pecans aside, all Boo does is watch the neighborhood, leave trinkets for Jem and Scout, and act to protect them when they’re attacked. Like killing a mockingbird, arresting Boo would serve no useful purpose, and harm someone who never meant anyone any harm. So over the course of the novel, killing mockingbirds is associated with the sinful, the pointless, and the cruel.

What’s the effect of using the mockingbird in this way? On the one hand, linking particular characters to mockingbirds reduces them to the level of animals; on the other, it says that even animals are worthy of sympathy and the respect of being left alone if they’re doing the same to you. By making killing mockingbirds a clear-cut case of wanton destruction, the book creates a rule for judging more complicated situations: bringing in the mockingbird is a prompt to take a step back from knee-jerk reactions (escaped convicts must be shot! murderers must be arrested!) and ask, what benefit is there? Why do this? What does it accomplish?

No mockingbirds were harmed in the making of this module.

The Radley Place

If Maycomb were Disneyland, the Radley Place would be the Haunted Mansion. And the Finch kids aren’t the only ones who avoid it like the plague.

A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked. (1.43)

What makes the Radley Place so frightening? Part of it is, of course, its most famous occupant, Boo Radley.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. (1.43)

Boo becomes a figure of superstition, a convenient excuse for bad things happening. Perhaps the house takes on such an evil reputation because Boo is never seen; when the kids look for him, all they ever see is the outside of the house, which becomes almost a stand-in for Boo himself. And like Boo, the house is isolated from the community it sits in the middle of.

The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb's ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps and call, "He-y," of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was born. (1.45)

The reclusiveness of all the residents of the Radley House, not just Boo, means that it’s a kind of black hole in the neighborhood, a house of mystery in the midst of the familiar. Perhaps the Finch kids and Dill spend so much time trying to make sense of the Radley Place, and the Radleys, because they don’t understand why anyone would voluntarily isolate themselves. If Maycomb is such a great place to live, why do the Radleys purposely keep themselves out of it? Is there something wrong with the Radleys, or something wrong with the community that they can’t or won’t be a part of? Why do they act so differently from everyone else?

When Scout finally gets to the threshold of the Radley Place after Boo rescues her and her brother from Ewell, she does an odd thing. Instead of peering through the window to try to see inside the house that’s intrigued the kids for so long, she turns around and looks outward.

In daylight, I thought, you could see to the postoffice corner.

Daylight... in my mind, the night faded.[…] It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him.

It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.

It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet, and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.

Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog.

Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. (31.25-31)

Scout realizes the Radley Place is like one-way glass: even though the kids couldn’t see in, Boo could see out, and perhaps was just as interested in them as they were in him. Does this make Boo a part of the community after all? On the one hand, he watched what everyone else was doing like a spectator at a play. On the other, he was able to break the fourth wall and step in when he was needed. At the end of the novel, Boo disappears once more into the Radley Place, and Scout says that they never saw him again. But perhaps with her knowledge of what the world looks like from inside it, Scout will now see the Radley Place as a living house instead of a dead one.

The Mad Dog

Meet Tim Johnson. He was just snuffling along, investigating interesting smells, burying bones only to dig them up again, and looking out for lady dogs, when – bam – the symbolic structure of the book picks him up and decrees he has to die. Why? What did poor Tim the Dog ever do to get infected with rabies and be gunned down like, well, a dog?

For starters, there’s his name. It may seem odd to give an animal the last name of the family it belongs to, but it’s apparently common practice in Maycomb – Judge Taylor’s pooch gets the same treatment. But more interestingly, it allows the dog’s name to sound suspiciously like that of another character. Tim Johnson…Tom Robinson? Coincidence? Perhaps. But Scout’s memory of her father shooting the dog does pop up more than once in situations involving Tom, and doesn’t get mentioned otherwise.

For example, after Scout turns away the lynch mob, her memory of Atticus in front of the jail merges with her memory of him shooting the dog.

I was very tired, and was drifting into sleep when the memory of Atticus calmly folding his newspaper and pushing back his hat became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. The full meaning of the night's events hit me and I began crying. (16.3)

But why does Scout associate the two images? Perhaps they’re both examples of Atticus doing tough things he doesn’t want to do. Or of Atticus facing off with a mindless threat. (He does later refer to the men in the lynch mob as "animals" [16.22]).

Scout returns to this memory again when she’s dozing off, waiting for the jury to announce its verdict in Tom’s case.

The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doors of the Radley Place. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning. […]. I expected Mr. Tate to say any minute, "Take him, Mr. Finch...." (21.46)

Why does Scout have this feeling? In both past and present, she’s waiting for something to happen; both times, she has no power over the outcome. In the previous instance, Atticus’s skill with a gun was able to save the neighborhood from the mad dog; will he be able to do the same this time? The same image recurs once more as the jury delivers their verdict.

I saw something only a lawyer's child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty. A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. (21.48)

Even Atticus’s talent for sharp-shooting can’t do anything if the gun isn’t loaded. It’s tempting to try to map out the symbolism here – is the gun the legal process? are the bullets the jury? is Tim Johnson racism? – but that might be an oversimplification. Perhaps it’s just the feeling Scout has that’s the link between the two situations – the sick horror at what’s happening, but knowing that it can’t be any other way.