Book Review
The brutality and sheer horror of racial discrimination in the 1930’s as told through the eyes of children. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee explores the themes of justice, social inequality and prejudice. The children’s innocence is so contrasting to the social injustice surrounding them in an extremely racist white community.
The novel starts off fairly innocent as the children in the novel are almost naive to the racial discrimination surrounding their worlds but as the novel goes on and Atticus Finch defends a black man who is accused of raping a white girl and Jem and Scout are bullied by other children because of this, highlighting the racism and hatred of the white community. Soon the children come to realise that the world they live in is cruel and unjust.
Their first judgments of the character of ‘Boo Radley’ is that he is a terrifying monstrous like character but they soon come to realize that he remains in his house for the mast majority of the novel as he is shy and occasionally violent hence why there are so many bad rumours about him which is symbolic to the racism against the black community that the children are almost naive to.
He is seen to be a monster to the children which is ironic, as Arthur Radley has seen the cruelty of the people in the community hence why he choses to stay inside. He shows true kindness towards the end of the novel when he saves the children from Bob Ewell.
The children soon see a different side of him after the trial when they see the cruelty and power of white men. “Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time… it’s because he wants to stay inside.”
The change in their lives after the trial is reflected on their views of Arthur Radley as they clearly see the clear difference between good and evil and they so wrongly judged him at the start of the novel just as the racist white community wrongly judged Tom Robinson when he is assumed to have raped a white girl and the novel tragically ends with his death due to the wrong accusations of the white men in power.
I think the character of Arthur Radeley is very symbolic of people assuming things based on rumours and wrongly judging good people.