To Kill a Mockingbird Themes

Imagine a world where everyone with blue eyes got to give orders to everyone with brown eyes. If you're born with blue eyes, you get the good jobs, the good schools, the good houses, and all the fa...

Ideal: a jury of one's peers dispassionately determine guilt or innocence based on the fact. Reality: a group of white men who aren't influential enough to get out of jury duty have decided the cas...

Are kids just the mini-me versions of the adults they will become, or is something substantial lost—or gained—in the transition to adulthood? And how does that process work, anyhow? To Kill a M...

Atticus thinks that everyone deserves a fair trial. Maycomb thinks that only white men do. Scout thinks that her father is right. Maycomb thinks that her father is wrong. So, who's more moral—the...

Early in To Kill a Mockingbird, the novel paraphrases Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural address: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Right on: fear can be very scary when it hijacks pe...

Being called a girl is about the worst thing possible—or so thinks Scout, the female protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. Girls wear frilly pink dresses, and don't get to play outside, swear, or...

In To Kill a Mockingbird, family is destiny. Within the confines of a small town where the same people have lived for generations, no one can escape…becoming their parents. Horror! Either the par...

How do you manage compassion for people when they are undeserving? Shmoop's answer: don't bother. To Kill a Mockingbird's answer: a little goodness, a little humility, and a lot of imagination. (No...