Abigail Lising
Mrs. Holton
English 9 Per. 2
28 November 2016
Finch the Mockingbird
Throughout Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, two major characters called Boo Radley and Tom Robinson respectively are frequently linked to the novel’s symbolic titular mockingbird, described by Miss Maudie Atkinson as sacred beings that only “make music for us to enjoy.” However, Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, can also be linked to the mockingbird. Atticus is essentially the novel’s moral device: Lee uses him as an expression of the effects that hope and hard work can have against hate by having Atticus defend Tom Robinson in the Ewell’s false rape case. As a result, the reader is truly able to grasp Atticus’s decisions and their weight because he is such an important part of how the trial plays out and thereby Tom Robinson’s fate. Thus, Atticus is the most compassionate character in To Kill a Mockingbird because he has decided to use his various gifts to help everyone he can, regardless of their social status. Atticus has brought up his children amidst the demands of his relatives, accepted the position of and worked incredibly hard as Tom Robinson’s defense attorney, and seen Boo Radley’s true personality long before Scout, Jem, and Dill were able to.
Atticus grew up in a white genteel family that owned black slaves due to their plantation. However, unlike Aunt Alexandra and the rest of Maycomb’s haughty upper class, Atticus exhibits humility and respect for others akin to that possessed by Walter Cunningham Sr. As seen in Aunt Alexandra and the women of the Missionary Society’s behavior during their gathering in Chapter 24 concerning Tom Robinson’s death and family, the vast majority of Maycomb’s upper crust prefer to look down upon those that lack their wealth and fair skin, showing no concern for their well-being. Mrs. Merriweather herself states that a “sulky darky… Just ruins your day to have one of ‘em in the kitchen.” She then proudly adds a comment about one of her servants, Sophy, whom she berates for “not being a Christian” due to her [Sophy] simply being one of the dozens of blacks that were devastated by the result of the trial and Tom Robinson’s death. These are the people that Atticus must earn the approval of if he wants to be viewed as a good person by his family, but he deliberately chooses not to, because he and his children do not understand the prejudice that Maycomb holds against the lower class and black people. Atticus has purposefully stated in his conversation with Uncle Jack: “Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up is something I don’t pretend to understand.” Following the moment that Scout hears this, the reader can catch a significant decrease in the amount of swearing that Scout uses in her speech, at the very least around Atticus. This is only one of the methods that Atticus employs to teach his children, and although they may be sly, they are effective. Jem, who is seemingly ambiguous at best on the subject of prejudice when it comes to anyone but his father, is shattered at the outcome of the trial. Granted, this is partly because of his sheer love for his father and immersion in the process of courthouse debate, but Jem truly shows a desire for the Ewells to be proved wrong and Tom Robinson to emerge not guilty. Atticus manages to teach these values to his children despite constant talk both inside his household and out of it: about Jem’s lack of civility and Scout’s apparent need to “be a lady” (Aunt Alexandra) and how he is mistreating his children for not remarrying and defending Tom Robinson, to the extent of being called foul names by the community (Stephanie Crawford, Mrs. Dubose, Cousin Francis, and Walter Cunningham). In reality, Atticus is able to teach Scout and Jem even without their mother around because he is able to acknowledge, as he says himself, that children can “spot an evasion quicker than adults,” and do his best to give advice to them based on what their point of view is on the situation because he has been through many of the same phases of maturing as they have. In other words, Atticus is able to empathize with Scout and Jem and be with them through whatever they pursue, a prime example of a father’s love and compassion for his children.
Atticus endures more than just parental struggles. He has long been influenced by those in the political field and these experiences have also been crucial to his ethical mind. The reader is told by Ms. Maudie that Atticus has earned the moniker “One-Shot Finch” for his shooting skills, but at the trial they are also told that Atticus is the only lawyer that Maycomb knows of who can keep the “jury hung [this] long.” Despite their disdain for Atticus being Tom Robinson’s lawyer, yet the people of Maycomb respect him because he does what no one else can: Atticus has proven that he is willing to defy decades of prejudice for a black man out of sheer sympathy for what he is going through. In fact, Scout states that Atticus’s favorite question is ‘Do you really think so…?’ because of his preoccupation with helping people see other sides of a story or issue. Atticus feels pity for both Tom Robinson and Maycomb itself, but his pity for Maycomb is expressed in how he executes his speech nearing the close of the trial. In this speech, he begs the jury to, “in the name of God, do your duty” and trust that Tom Robinson’s testimony is true. It is noteworthy that Atticus feels strongly about the issue of racism in Maycomb, but it has never been directed towards a specific person or group: Atticus is angered by the issue itself and the effects of “Maycomb’s usual disease” on the otherwise perfectly sensible people that suffer from it. The trial is how Atticus indirectly calls Maycomb to action against their blindness to the great divide between fair and dark skin, although it is very important to say that Atticus did not defend Tom Robinson because he was black. Atticus defended Tom Robinson because he was not the perpetrator of Bob and Mayella Ewell’s crimes, though he was treated as if he were based on “the assumption–the evil assumption–that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women.” Atticus’s strong sense of right and wrong that he displays in the trial comes from his conviction that a court of justice is the one place that anyone, regardless of genealogical circumstances, can receive a fair verdict. Where others define their compassion as emotional support, Atticus uses his to protect those who are wrongly accused and manipulated, and that is his true strength as a lawyer.
As an individual, Atticus has much more experience than Scout and Jem. This contributes to his ability to “climb into someone’s skin and walk around in it,” which is why he is able to understand the reasons that Boo Radley would want to stay in his house and thus see what his life is like much quicker than it would take someone in Scout’s or even Jem’s age group. Atticus’s past is never stated from the beginning, but the reader does know that he married a woman fifteen years his junior and had Scout and Jem before their mother passed away. By rough estimate, Atticus should have been at least in his mid-forties when Scout was born, so he has already been subjected to about six times the life that Scout has yet to go through. Based on Scout’s quick account of what she knows about Atticus’s career, the reader is told that Atticus has dealt with uncooperative clients such as the Haverfords before. Atticus knows the minds of criminals, and he of all people would be able to tell if the neighborhood gossip about Boo was true. Atticus also indirectly foreshadows Bob Ewell’s death at Boo’s hands with his quote from Chapter 11: “real courage is… when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” He was referring to Mrs. Dubose at the time, though later in the book this quote is also applicable to Boo’s