To Kill a Mockingbird Key Themes and Quotes

To Kill a Mockingbird Key Themes and Quotes

1. Prejudice

   • "Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks"
   • "Why, one sprig of nut-grass can ruin a whole yard."
   • "Inside...was a white, waxy, perfect camellia."
   • "It won't be many years, Jean Louise, before you become interested in clothes and boys"
   • "a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak."
   • "evidently taking delight in corrupting a child"
   • "In our courts all men are created equal"
   • "Hypocrites, Mrs Perkins, born hypocrites....At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders"
   • "Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody."

2. Parenting

   • "Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny"
   • "Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets."
   • "if I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in the town"
   • "If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him."

3. growing up

   • "You never really understand a person... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
   • "Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for her actions."
   • "That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me."
   • "Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in"
   • "It's like bein' a caterpillar in a cocoon"
   • "it's because he wants to stay inside"
   • "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
   • "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

4. Innocence and lack of innocence

   • "did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?"
   • "Children...can spot an evasion quicker than adults"
   • "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
   • "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way."
   • "You haven't even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse."
   • "Because you're children and you can understand it"
   • "and his shoulders jerked as if each 'guilty' was a separate stab between them"
   • He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds"
   • "Will you take me home?"

5. Kindness and Courage

   • "thought it sensible to save what she valued most"
   • "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win"
   • "I haven't shot a gun in thirty years-...I'd feel might comfortable if you did now"
   • "I wanted you to see what real courage is....According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew."

6. Racism

   • "it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover"
   • "Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays."
   • "She owned a bright green square Brick and a black chauffeur, both kept in an unhealthy state of tidiness"
   • "You know what we want. Get aside from the door, Mr Finch."
   • "just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere"
   • "I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!"
   • "Jedge, I've asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder."
   • "Mr Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too."
   • "You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?"
   • "Cry about the hell white people give coloured folk, without even stopping to think that they're people, too."
   • "that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings..."