To Kill A Mockingbird

In school, I studied about the novel 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. It was really really inspiring and I really wanted to share it with you.
It is an essay I wrote about the title 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and I really wanted the share my ideas.

<Essay>

Topic: Why did Harper Lee name the book ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’?

I was asked to write an essay about a very interesting topic, which people usually take it for granted. Why did the author name the book ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’? Some people don’t care about the title and just think that the author randomly chose the title. I don’t blame them for thinking that way because if you just see the basic layer of this book, there is no reason for the author to name the book ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. But luckily, I found the reason why Harper Lee, the author of this book, named the novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. And I think it was the best choice she could have ever made from any other kind of title. The title of the book explains every kind of conflict that comes in the book and it just fits perfectly to the book. The title shows the reason why Harper Lee wrote this book and it also includes the idea that Harper Lee wants to spread to the readers. If it was any other title such as ‘Scout’s Adventure’, I think it wouldn’t have came in the reader’s attention because it will look so plain.

The bird that is mentioned in the title is not just an ordinary bird. It is a mockingbird and mockingbirds don’t ruin farm work or harm other animals. It just sings for others and flies from tree to tree. I find this an enough reason to be the title of this book. This can mean a lot of things in a society like Macomb County. It can symbolize the innocence in the story, the helplessness of the blacks, or how Arthur Radley is shown in the novel. Miss Maudie in the book explains to Scout about what Atticus told Scout. Atticus said killing a mockingbird is a sin and Scout couldn’t understand it. So she goes to Miss Maudie and asks her. And this is what she says: ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ Miss Maudie is just talking about the mockingbird but in the story, the mockingbird symbolizes various things.

I think the first reason why Harper Lee named the title ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is because she wanted to show the innocence of children, especially Scout. There is a part in the book where Scout saves Atticus from a situation that could have ended horribly. Scout tells to a bunch of angry farmers about a friend she has in school. And she points to one of the farmers and tells him this, ‘He’s in my grade, and he does right well. He’s a good boy, a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you?’ This suddenly alerts Mr. Cunningham about his family his son and his actual life. And the farmers don’t attack Atticus because they realize that they are doing a horrible thing. This couldn’t have been done if Scout didn’t have the courage and the innocence to speak up. It was a really dangerous situation and even Atticus couldn’t do anything about it. But Scout speaks up just with her innocence waking up the farmers that they also have a family and they shouldn’t be doing anything here. So Harper Lee named the book ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ because she knows that it will be the most horrible thing in the world to kill the innocence of children. Killing the innocence of children is a disgraceful thing because then, Scout wouldn’t have been able to save Atticus nor alerted the farmers about their family and their life. This also gets related with what Miss Maudie said that killing a mockingbird is a sin. In my opinion, killing the innocence of children is more than a sin. Then it will be ruining the children’s chance to enjoy fairy tale imagination and every story with happy endings.

The second reason why I think Harper Lee named the title of the novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is to show or emphasize the helplessness of the blacks in those days. Mockingbirds aren’t violent or powerful which means it is as helpless to stronger birds as how blacks were in those days. And blacks were left behind and didn’t get treated properly or equally as the whites. Similar to this, mockingbirds don’t get treated the same as peacocks or other huge and colorful birds because it seems so useless and unimportant. The biggest evidence I could find from the book about racism was the scene where Tom Robinson was accused for rape. He actually was trying to help Mayella Ewell. But because Mayella Ewell is white and Tom Robinson is black, the judgments weren’t fair. And Atticus argues to the jury of how unfair this is and that the jury should think straight. He says ‘Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral; some Negro men are not to be trusted around women – black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire’ Here, Atticus includes the word ‘black and white’ to explain to the audience that blacks are no different with whites and that whites also make the same mistakes that the blacks make. And I think the title again, explains this conflict. Killing A Mockingbird is a sin, but no one really cares about small mockingbirds so they don’t understand that it is a sin at all. Tom Robinson gets shot later although Atticus tried to save him till the end. This means that another innocent mockingbird has been killed, which is ideal to the title ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. And I think from this, the readers can also know that Atticus always keeps his promise. He said on page 90 that he will rather shoot tin cans than shooting a mockingbird. And he proves it right when he tries to save Tom Robinson from getting murdered.

Lastly, I think the title also gets involved with Arthur Radley. Arthur Radley is always biased in the book. People in Maycomb County have a very negative point of view of Arthur Radley, when he actually is a nice man and who cares a lot about children. And this was proved when Arthur Radley saved Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell who tried to kill them. Arthur Radley is just like a mockingbird because he is soft hearted in the inside. I don’t know about the outside but at least in the inside he is soft and kind hearted and is always ready to help people who are weaker than him. And this doesn’t get affected by how the people think about him. And I think this is the beautiful part in him, which people did not realize and which people will not realize till the end of the book. I wouldn’t say that this is like ‘killing’ a mockingbird but I will rather say Arthur Radley’s situation is like not ‘realizing’ the mockingbirds beauty, since it doesn’t show off to people and it is not huge like a peacock which everybody notices. I also think that people do not realize how Arthur Radley is kind and how heroic he is until he saves two children’s lives. Before that day, people ignored him and didn’t care anything that has to do with him. Now that they realize that he became a hero, they will obviously start praising him. This is just like ignoring a mockingbird since it is so small and weak, but then starts realizing the absence of mockingbird’s beauty when it stops singing. People take the singing of mockingbirds granted since it’s always there behind them. But if the mockingbird stops singing then people will start missing the music and will try everything they can to make the mockingbirds sing again. I think Arthur Radley is just like that because people will start realizing his presence after he saved two children when they didn’t even know he existed till that day. And I think Harper Lee linked it with the mockingbird. I don’t exactly think it is ‘killing’ a mockingbird I think it is taking the beauty of mockingbird for ‘granted’.

That was the last reason why I thought Harper Lee named the book ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. I really think it was the best choice that Harper Lee had and I think she did an amazing job and naming the book. The title of the book just somehow makes the whole book tied up together. And I think that gave a big support to the author for spreading the idea of the whole story to the readers. And I just love the fact that she didn’t name the title ‘Killing A Mockingbird Is A Sin’ and just said ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. This makes the readers more curious about the story of this novel and makes it more mysterious. I realized once more that authors think really thoroughly for choosing the title because this book’s title was perfect for the story itself and for making the whole idea get stuck in reader’s mind for a long time.

-       Anne Chang

Grade 8




-Hope you enjoyed it! :)
See you next time...