To Kill a Mocking Bird
The Defender "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" (Lee 30). Atticus Finch says these words to his daughter, Scout, after he elucidates to her why it is important to not be quick to judge a book by its cover . In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird, the main conflicts are centered around prejudice. In the tiny town of Maycomb, everybody is set on tradition and there is no room for oddity. Atticus Finch breaks down the walls that everybody else builds up about first and lasting impressions, slowly but surely. Atticus Finch is a discreet example of practicing equality because he espouses the outcasts of Maycomb. When Atticus sees that Scout, Jem, and Dill are mocking Boo Radley, the mysterious neighbor who nobody knows about except for the urban legends they hear from Miss Stephanie Crawford, the town gossip, he puts his foot down and reprimands the children to quit their connived games. While ordering the kids to quit bullying Boo, Jem argues, "We weren't makin' fun of him, we weren't laughin' at him, we were just--" ... "No," said Atticus, "putting life's history on display for the edification of the neighborhood" (39). When no one else is on Boo Radley's side, Atticus is, because he knows in his heart that it is wrong to make fun of someone, especially someone that they do not know. "What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him. Furthermore, had it never occurred to us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the front door instead of a side window?" (39). Atticus orders the kids to stay away from the Radley house until they were invited there, and that they were not to play an asinine game he had seen them playing or to make fun of anybody on the street or in the town. Mrs. Dubose is the second individual whom Atticus defends when no one else does. Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose is a hot-tempered,