To Kill a Mockingbird

I’ve been reading a fascinating book about a little community in Alabama called To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This book portrays lessons about life and the importance of telling the truth. One of the best lessons taught in this book is that doing the right thing isn’t always rewarded. There are three characters in this story that I’d like to tell how they play a part in this small community of Maycomb. These characters are Boo Radley, Scout, and Atticus.

First let me talk about Boo Radley, also known as Arthur. Boo is the object of fascination for Jem, Scout, and Dill. He is a recluse who has remained in the house down the street from the Finch house for years. When he was younger he got into some trouble when he became involved with a group of rowdy kids from Old Sarum. One night they resisted arrest by Maycomb County’s beadle and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. After that, Arthur’s father, Mr. Radley, took him home and he wasn’t seen again for fifteen years. But it was said that one day Boo Radley stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors while cutting newspaper clippings for his scrapbook. For this he was locked in the courthouse basement for many years before he came home again. From these stories learned from gossiping neighbors, Jem, Scout, and Dill made ghost stories of Boo Radley, and the other children in town were afraid of him as well. They said that he only came out at night to eat cats and squirrels, and he was the local spook. Boo, however, begins to win Scout and Jem over by leaving gifts for them in the knothole of an oak tree until his brother, Nathan, cements the knothole. Boo even covers Scout with a blanket on a cold night she and Jem spent in front of the Radley house while Miss Maudie’s house burned down. Boo was so quiet that Scout never even realized he’d covered her shoulders with the blanket until after the fact. After all the children’s attempts to drag Boo Radley from his house, he ends up saving them from Bob Ewell.

Now let me talk about Scout. Originally named Jean Louise Finch, scout is the narrator. In the story she is looking back as an adult to the two years of her life when she learned courage and kindness and the importance of doing the right thing. She learned from her father and neighbors that do the right thing isn’t always rewarded, but it’s the right thing to do and that protecting the innocent is a large part of that. She is so reliant on her father. Without him in her life she would probably be uncontrollable. Her and her father,