Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Coexistence of Good and Evil
The most important theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is
the book’s exploration of the moral nature of human beings—that
is, whether people are essentially good or essentially evil. The
novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition
from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume
that people are good because they have never seen evil, to a more
adult perspective, in which they have confronted evil and must incorporate
it into their understanding of the world. As a result of this portrayal
of the transition from innocence to experience, one of the book’s
important subthemes involves the threat that hatred, prejudice,
and ignorance pose to the innocent: people such as Tom Robinson
and Boo Radley are not prepared for the evil that they encounter,
and, as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to
an extent by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after
the trial. Whereas Scout is able to maintain her basic faith in
human nature despite Tom’s conviction, Jem’s faith in justice and
in humanity is badly damaged, and he retreats into a state of disillusionment.
The moral voice of To Kill a Mockingbird is
embodied by Atticus Finch, who is virtually unique in the novel
in that he has experienced and understood evil without losing his
faith in the human capacity for goodness. Atticus understands that,
rather than being simply creatures of good or creatures of evil,
most people have both good and bad qualities. The important thing
is to appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad qualities
by treating others with sympathy and trying to see life from their
perspective. He tries to teach this ultimate moral lesson to Jem
and Scout to show them that it is possible to live with conscience
without losing hope or becoming cynical. In this way, Atticus is
able to admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage even while deploring her racism.
Scout’s progress as a character in the novel is defined by her gradual
development toward understanding Atticus’s lessons, culminating
when, in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley as a
human being. Her newfound ability to view the world from his perspective
ensures that she will not become jaded as she loses her innocence.
The Importance of Moral Education
Because exploration of the novel’s larger moral questions
takes place within the perspective of children, the education of
children is necessarily involved in the development of all of the
novel’s themes. In a sense, the plot of the story charts Scout’s
moral education, and the theme of how children are educated—how
they are taught to move from innocence to adulthood—recurs throughout
the novel (at the end of the book, Scout even says that she has
learned practically everything except algebra). This theme is explored
most powerfully through the relationship between Atticus and his
children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social conscience
in Jem and Scout. The scenes at school provide a direct counterpoint
to Atticus’s effective education of his children: Scout is frequently
confronted with teachers who are either frustratingly unsympathetic
to children’s needs or morally hypocritical. As is true of To
Kill a Mockingbird’s other moral themes, the novel’s conclusion
about education is that the most important lessons are those of
sympathy and understanding, and that a sympathetic, understanding
approach is the best way to teach these lessons. In this way, Atticus’s
ability to put himself in his children’s shoes makes him an excellent
teacher, while Miss Caroline’s rigid commitment to the educational
techniques that she learned in college makes her ineffective and
even dangerous.
The Existence of Social Inequality
Differences in social status are explored largely through
the overcomplicated social hierarchy of Maycomb, the ins and outs
of which constantly baffle the children. The relatively well-off
Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with most
of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the
Cunninghams lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells
rest below the Cunninghams. But the black community in Maycomb, despite
its abundance of admirable qualities, squats below even the Ewells,
enabling Bob Ewell to make up for his own lack of importance by
persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid social divisions that make
up so much of the adult world are revealed in the book to be both
irrational and destructive. For example, Scout cannot understand
why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young Walter
Cunningham. Lee uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant
layering of Maycomb society to critique the role of class status
and, ultimately, prejudice in human interaction.
Prejudice
Discussions about prejudice in general, and racism in particular, are at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. Conflicts over racism drive some of the most compelling and memorable scenes in the novel. Racial conflict causes the two dramatic deaths that occur in the story. On one level, To Kill a Mockingbird represents a simplistic and moralistic view of racial prejudice. White people who are racist are bad, and white people who are not racist are good. Atticus risks his reputation, his position in the community, and ultimately the safety of his children because he is not racist, and therefore good. Bob Ewell falsely accuses a black man of rape, spits on Atticus publicly, and attempts to murder a child because he is racist, and therefore bad. To Kill a Mockingbird does attempt to look at some of the complexities of living in a racist society. Both Scout and Jem confront everything from unpleasantness to murderous hostility as they learn how their family’s resistance to racial prejudice has positioned them against the community at large.
The treatment of prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird is not only simplistic in terms of morality, but also in terms of perspective. To read the novel one would think racism is a problem that exists between educated, financially stable, moral white people, and ignorant, dirt poor, vicious white people. The black characters in the novel are rarely given voice on the topic of racism. When they do speak it is largely in terms of gratitude for the good white people of town and not in terms of anger, frustration, resistance, or hostility towards the culture of racism. When the author does present black characters as trying to resist racist abuses, she shows them doing so by avoiding or retreating, as when Tom Robinson attempts to escape from prison or when Helen Robinson walks through the woods to avoid going past the Ewell house. Black characters in the novel never respond to racism actively and barely respond to it reactively. When a black character is critical of white people, as when Lula challenges Calpurnia for bringing Jem and Scout to the black church, she is ostracized by the rest of the black community, suggesting her complaints against white people are unfounded.
