Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, centers on Scout, a young girl, and the trial of an innocent man that forces her to grow up even faster. Scout doesn’t realize the severity of many of the events of the book as they are taking place, and as such she is an innocent. We can see her develop through the loss of this innocence as events effect Tom Robinson, a man who is innocent in a very different way.
While the first part of the book portrays the Southern town in which she lives in a mostly positive light, the second half exposes the extreme ugliness of the townspeople that is exposed through their prejudice. The novel’s main theme is to show the destructiveness of prejudice and how this destroys the innocence found normally in children. Out of this prejudice, Scout’s father, Atticus, acts as the moral hero who is a model to strive for.
Because Scout‘s father is the defense lawyer for Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, Scout and her brother Jem are the target of racial prejudice of the townspeople, and this by extension includes their family. Ideally one would hope that the ties of family would exclude being discriminated against by family, but this was simply not the case. When visiting family, Francis tells Scout what the whole family has been saying about the situation: “Just what I said. Grandma says it’s bad enough he let’s you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a nigger-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin.
He’s ruinin’ the family, that’s what he’s doin’” (Lee 86). Their own family was unable to look beyond their own prejudice; they simply saw this as shameful and hurtful to themselves. Considering how even her family discriminated against her because of the trial, Scout is forced to realize how widespread and ugly racism can get. Because of this, she realizes how much they have in common with other people who are discriminated against: “They begin to realize their own connection with the community’s outsiders, and they observe one man’s heroism in the face of community prejudice” (Johnson 2).
The mob scene is yet another example of how innocence can be lost in the face of prejudice and discrimination. Scout does not fully realize what is happening in this scene, and so she acts like a young child would in a situation in which she isn’t in danger. As such, she spots somebody in the crowd and attempts to talk to him like she would if she simply saw him on the street:
“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance. “I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He‘s your boy, ain‘t he? Ain‘t he sir‘” (Lee 153).
It is her innocence that is evident in her questioning of Mr. Cunningham that forces the mob to examine what it is that they are doing. While one way to look at this scene would be to say that Scout didn‘t know what she was doing and didn‘t understand her actions, another way to look at it would be to say that Scout‘s actions forced the mob to consider their actions: “Harper Lee knew that there were things children understand that adults don’t.
She knew children weep over injustice and lose this wisdom as they grow into adulthood” (Heath 8). Once she realized at some later point the full danger of the situation she had been in, Scout would inevitably have a different view of not only the situation but of the people involved in it as well. Realizing the ugliness of what they had attempted to do would invariably taint her opinion of these people, and this is just another way in which the childhood innocence possessed by Scout would be destroyed. This is simply a part of growing, according to Heath, and is simply part of passing from childhood into adulthood.
The trial is yet another part, perhaps the most damaging, in which Scout loses her innocence to the ugliness of prejudice and racism. Atticus, who was obviously an excellent lawyer, was not only more convincing than the other lawyer, but he had the truth on his side as well. However, because of the deeply ingrained prejudice, the jury still chose to convict Tom Robinson: “Tom Robinson is innocent but is judged guilty by the white jury…The trial awakens a sense of social consciousness within them that had been nurtured by their father” (Crowe 86). This is perhaps the most outright and blatant episode in the book in which prejudice is displayed.
It shows how Tom’s life was destroyed because of the shame that the accuser felt in attempting to seduce him: “What is the evidence of her defense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a negro” (Lee 203). Tom was simply evidence, and that evidence had to be destroyed. Eventually Tom is shot and killed as he attempts to escape prison. This further disillusions the children, particularly Jem, who doubts the concept of justice and the system that supposedly supports it.
After being witness to all of these events throughout the book, there is no way that Scout and Jem would not be changed. The innocence of childhood stands no chance against these kind of events. While a person might say that it is simply part of growing up, it is hard to argue that something is not still unfortunately lost. Who says people are better off when they lose their innocence? It could be argued that a character like Atticus did not fully lose his innocence because he still believed that he might have been able to do something about the situation.
If anything, the book argues that it is important to hang on to a certain amount of innocence from childhood because it is only through this that people might think that they can make a difference. Even though Tom Robinson still ended up dead and convicted, it is necessary to not completely become jaded, because it is only through the belief that a person can make a difference that people decide upon actions that do truly make a difference.
While the book portrays terrible events which show how it’s impossible to remain completely innocent, it also makes a point of stating that it is only through a conscious effort to hang onto that innocence that a person can become a truly moral hero. The true hero is the person who stands up for what is moral and what it right, even though it might be the unpopular thing to do, or even though it might put that person in danger. This is the way that Atticus acts in the novel.
Works Cited
Crowe, Chris, From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges Between Young Adult Literature and the Classics, Greenwood Publishing, Santa Barbara, CA, 2005.
Heath, Samuel, To Kill a Mockingbird: A Critique on Behalf of Children. Lincoln, NE, iUniverse Publishing, 2007.
Johnson, Claudia, Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird, Santa Barbara, CA, Greenwood Publishing company, 1994.
Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird, New York, Warner Books, Inc., 1960.