“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his
point-of-view -until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” these are
the words spoken by Atticus Finch when giving advice to his little girl, Jean
Louise, “Scout.” This theme, “do not judge a person before you get to know
them,” is something most children, during this day and age, are taught when
they are very young, and is the reoccurring theme in To Kill A Mocking Bird. The
two clear examples of this theme are with Arthur “Boo” Radley and Tom
Robinson. When the characters are first met, they are introduced as bad and
maybe even evil people. However, when the characters start to develop, it can be
noticed that they are actually good people. In To Kill A Mocking Bird, from the
time Arthur “Boo” Radley was a small boy until the time he was a grown adult
he was a very misunderstood character. When the children of Maycomb, like Jem
and Scout, were young, people would tell horror stories about Boo. One of them
was when Boo allegedly stabbed his father with scissors, but throughout the
book, it was foreshadowed that Boo really was not a bad person. The first
example of the foreshawdowing was when Jem got his pants stuck on the fence, and
Boo sewed them up and folded them for when Jem came back to claim them. Then,
when Miss Maudie’s house caught on fire, Scout was standing outside watching,
and Boo put a blanket around her shoulders, so she would not get cold. Finally,
Boo kept giving Jem and Scout “gifts.” “Neighbors bring food with death
and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He
gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies,
and our lives.” The greatest thing Boo Radley did, that definitely made him a
good person was he saved Jem’s and Scout’s lives from a crazy Bob Ewell. To
both Finch children, Boo was a very scary person at first, but in the end, he
was a kind and caring person. “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done
it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do
it-seems that only children weep. Good night,” declared Atticus about Tom
Robinson’s verdict. Tom Robinson was a character who was found guilty of
raping a white women. In the South there was a hierarchy, based on name and
race, like a caste system. Tom Robinson was at the very bottom of this
hierarchy, because he was black. Even with the overwhelming evidence that
pointed to his innocence, he was found guilty. In a way Tom Robinson was found
guilty even before he walked into the courtroom because of his race. Many
people, including Atticus, knew that verdict would be “guilty” even before
the trial started, unless a miracle happened. Tom Robinson was “judged”
before anyone knew anything about him. If the jurors would of kept in mind,
“do not judge people before you get to know them,” an innocent man probably
would not of lost his life. A book similar to To Kill A Mockingbird is Walk Two
Moons. This is because the theme in Walk Two Moons is “don’t judge a person
until you’ve walked two moons in their moccasins.” In both books, this is
the reoccurring theme. In Walk Two Moons a girl judges her neighbor before she
even gets to know her. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Tom Robinson and Arthur
“Boo” Radley are both judged before anyone actually gets to know them too.
The books were written at two completely different times in history, referring
to how life was for everyone, but yet the themes are the same. This shows
throughout history people have looked at and written about not judging people.
Therefore, making it a very important moral and topic through the years.
“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
These are the words spoken by Jean Loise Finch about turning in Boo Radley for
Bob Ewell’s killing. “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 butsing their heads out for us. That’s why it’s a
sin to kill a mockingbird.” “Its a sin to kill a mocking bird,” and “do
not judge people before you get you know them” are two themes that are
intertwined and actually can make one theme. In both Tom Robinson’s and Boo
Radley’s cases it was like shooting a mockingbird, because they never did
anything wrong, but they were judged before anyone really knew them. So, by
judging them, it was like killing them, and in Tom Robinson’s case it did
result in his death. Therefore, the theme “do not judge people before you get
to know them,” can be worded in many different ways, and put in many different
contexts, but it still means the same thing, and the book To Kill A Mockingbird
conveys this moral very well.