To Kill A Mockingbird

A detailed Summary of To Kill A Mockingbird

The novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" deals quite strongly with the issue of empathy. When Atticus tells Scout, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.... Until you climb in his skin and walk around in it," he was absolutely right. The novel revolves around people who are quick to assume they know the other characters personalities, beliefs and feelings when in fact, they are only judging the surface. Due to the fact that the novel is written from Scouts point of view, demonstrating her views, feelings and how she perceives the problems or issues evolving around her, we don't get to fully understand the other characters or witness what they are feeling and thinking on the inside. For instance, most of the characters in the book don't really know anything about Boo Radley. They base their views on him by assumption alone and create stories to circulate about him. The issue of empathy is also made obvious in the character of Dolphus Raymond. Dolphus is a white man who mixes with the black people and is thought to be drunk all the time. It is thought that Dolphus is evil but he is in fact the opposite of those claims. Atticus is another character who is misread in som

The issue of empathy is shown greatly in the character Boo Radley. Boo is Maycomb County's invalid. Everyone knows where he lives and who his family is, but half of them have never seen him. They base their thoughts and views of him on fiction instead of fact. Some of them, especially the children fear him because of stories they have been told about him. For instance, Miss Stephanie Crawford told Jem that one day Boo was cutting things out of the paper when he suddenly stabbed his father in the leg with the scissors and then continued cutting. Who knows if this was true but because of this story and other stories people feared Boo Radley. Boo never has the opportunity to speak out for himself and explain what is really happening, hence people have taken it upon themselves to assume that he is completely bad. In the scene at

the end when Bob Ewell attacked Jem and Scout it was Boo who came to the children's rescue and therefore redeemed his bad reputation with everyone or at least with Jem and Scout. From this episode Jem and Scout should have learned that you should never listen to just one side of the story, or believe what you hear without searching for the true facts. This is something we should all take notice of.

e ways. Especially to Jem and Scout because they barely know him. Atticus bottles up all his emotions so even his children don't know the whole truth about him. From those examples you can see that empathy is an important pa

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 979
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English