To Kill a Mockingbird by Dominique

To Kill a Mockingbird by Dominique - February 2015 Scholarship Essay

Most students dread required reading throughout high school because analyzing the novels can take the fun out of reading them. However there is one book that I read in my freshman year English class that stood out more than all the others I have read, and I hope that every high schooler has the opportunity to read it as well. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. My class read it together, but before I knew it, I was ahead of the class and the novel was dog-eared and covered in notes and highlighter. This novel changed how I view other people.

The main character is a young girl nicknamed Scout, who's father is a well known lawyer. The novel is filled with symbolic characters that all represent a Mockingbird. At one point, Scout's father is given a difficult case where he has to represent an innocent man that ends up being charged as guilty anyway. The catch? He was a black man accused of attacking a white woman in the 1930's, and it was only her word against his. Her father fought for him and presented undeniable evidence that he was a good man and had never actually attacked her. This was the first mockingbird in the novel, and he eventually was shot and killed trying to escape prison.

There was also an underlying story behind the foreground of the novel. Scout had a neighbor that had never left his house and everybody suspected as disfigured or to have committed a terrible crime. He was dubbed "Boo Radley" because he seemed like a ghost to the other neighbors on the street. Little did Scout and her brother know that whenever they played in the street or walked to school, Boo Radley was watching over them. One night as Scout and her brother were walking home, they were attacked and Boo Radley came out and saved them. Although they never saw him very well, they knew that he had been a bit like their guardian angel in watching over them. At the end of the novel, we see it from Boo's point of view where he watches "his children" play in the street and is looking over them. I love this because it is so ironic how everybody sees him as a monster when he is anything but. Boo Radley is another Mockingbird.
In a way, all the mockingbird symbols in this novel are suppressed or "killed" by society's twisted views of them, but they all turn out to be good people. And according to Scout's father, it is bad luck to kill a mockingbird.

The most important thing about this novel is that it is written from Scout's ten year old point of view. It is so innocent and she does not understand that it is not okay to be on the side of a black man, or an introvert that has never left their house. Scout herself represents the way we should look at people- instead of letting other people or society decide what you think, wait until you know the person yourself. Because if you let society decide this for you, you may just be shooting at a mockingbird.

The problem with high school is that everybody thinks with the mob mentality. Oh, that person is weird to you? Well then let's go tell the whole school to shun them. It is important to read this book before one graduates high school because it is a reality check; it forces one to look at themselves and reconsider how they judge other people. I think it would do a lot of people (not just high schoolers) some good to think the same innocent way that young Scout does.