Month: April 2015

Harper Lee satirises the white community by juxtaposing the black and white communities’ reactions. The black community reacted to Atticus’ actions in helping Tom Robinson and standing for what is right by giving him food and showering him with gifts and Atticus’ reaction reflects the type d person he is, he says ” I’m very grateful but tell them they must never do this again, times are too hard” he is a very humble man that knows what is good and what is bad. The White community however react in a very negative way, by gossiping about why Jem and Scout were in the “coloured balcony”, you can see the contast in the attitude the white and black community have towards each other.
After the trial, Jem and Scout both cry after Tom Robinson was fiund guilty, they cried because the truth was so obvious and present yet the White community still chose to convict Tom Robinson of a crime he had not committed and they cried because the people were so blind and didn’t see their mistakes.
When Jem and Scout are seen by Miss Maudie, she offers them a slice of cake and without saying anything she showed to the Finch Family that nothing had changed after the trial and the case, and she shows her kindness with this small act and Harper Lee shows that not all of the White community was the same, and that Articus wasn’t the only mockingbird.

I have to chosen to explain why ATTICUS is a mockingbird in the book.
Although Atticus displays several of the attributes of the mockingbird, he is peaceful and tries to only present goodness in a sinful world however he is not innocent. Unlike the simple minded characteristics of the book’s other human mockingbirds (Boo, Tom and the children), Atticus sees the evil in the world and fully understands its implications, and he seeks to fight against it and protect his own children from it. When Atticus tells Jem that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, he is trying to explain the nature of some people in the world at the time and even now, Atticus is not necessarily the one being compared to as a mockingbird. Harper Lee was trying to make us, the readers, know there were certain characters that were to be compared to the mockingbird.