"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."To Kill a MockingbirdMiss Maudie Atkinson to Scout, Chapter 10.
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In Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader is shown that the mockingbird, a bird that does nothing but bring enjoyment to humans, symbolizes innocence. As the story progresses, an African American man who is a hired hand in a house is accused and persecuted for trying to rape a young woman and found guilty by the court. In the process, however, Atticus Finch, the narrator Scout’s father, puts the accusing family under public scrutiny after exposing some questionable conduct in the family home. The man on the side of the persecuting family then threatens Finch’s family, and while trying to hurt Scout, he is ambushed by a mysterious neighbor who saves her life, but ends up startling the perpetrator who ends up killing himself in his confusion. Because both men, the African American and the mysterious neighbor, don’t do any wrong, they are both examples of the innocent mockingbird that is bringing unexpected benefit to the surrounding neighborhoods.
The reason this blog is called The Murder of a Mockingbird is because we as a culture are losing the simple innocence that riddles childhood with fond memories. Literature, deemed the ‘outlaw’ of all books, is a culprit in the fast deteriorating ignorance of the population. Good or bad, the childlike innocence that flees with age is aided by the hunger for knowledge and that knowledge is found through pieces of literature. The purpose is not to become more childlike, but to move away from the ignorant bliss that is childhood innocence and gain a more powerful understanding of the world and how it works. And unfortunately, a few mockingbirds may get hurt in the process.
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