To Kill a Mockingbird Themes

To Kill a Mockingbird Themes

Race

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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...

Justice and Judgment

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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...

Youth

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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 ho...

Morality and Ethics

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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 he...

Fear

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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...

Women and Femininity

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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 dres...

Family

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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…b...

Compassion and Forgiveness

(Click the themes infographic to download.) 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 l...