“Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?” Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.” Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?” “Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” (pg. 147)

This quote is very important to Scout’s development as well as to our understanding of the symbols in the book. It refers back to when Scout and Jem got air rifles for Christmas and were told by Miss Maudie that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird:

“Your father’s right,” she said. “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.” (beginning of chapter 10, pg. 49)

From this, Scout learned that things don’t always turn out the way we want them to, even if we do everything right, like mockingbirds. There will always be someone to come along and sabotage people because of jealousy or envy. I think that’s when she realized the importance of being kind and fair to others, and after that was able to understand why even though Boo might’ve taken someone’s life, he had a good reason for it.

The reason why Mr. Tate was so desperate to keep the situation under covers was because he knew that it was very likely that Boo had killed Bob Ewell, but Boo didn’t deserve what he had coming for him. On the other hand, Mr. Ewell was already responsible for the death of Tom Robinson and in a way, deserved what he got. It would have been a sin to bring the case to trial and have Boo convicted because he is symbolic of a mockingbird: he was considerate of others, having taken care of the children the night of the fire, given them presents and protected them when they needed it.

As Mr. Tate said: “There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead.” (pg 146)

My chosen quote (what Scout says about shooting a mockingbird) is important to the story because it shows how she has grown and can now understand things that most people would struggle to understand. At the beginning of the novel, she was very short-tempered and frustrated because she couldn’t always see the bigger picture. She has done a lot of growing since then. She could see that what Boo did was wrong, but only from one point of view.