There are two “mockingbirds” in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: Arthur “Boo” Radley and Tom Robinson.

‘ That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. ‘Your father’s right,’ she said. ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy…but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

When Scout and Jem receive airguns for Christmas, Atticus tells them that although he would prefer that they practice their shooting with tin cans, if they must shoot at living things, they must never shoot at mockingbirds. Atticus explains that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Atticus Finch is a fictional character in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird. A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel Go Set a Watchman, written in the mid-1950s but not published until 2015.

With his high morals, Atticus will not lower himself to the violent measures used by others, even for his own self-defense. Atticus also reveals his fatal flaw: he tends to be overly optimistic or unrealistically hopeful at times.

Atticus Finch has been admired for decades as the ideal lawyer. He fought with courage and grace against the racist judicial system of Alabama for the underdog, a black man named Tom Robinson unjustly accused of rape.

The protagonist is Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, an intelligent though unconventional girl who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel. She is raised with her brother, Jeremy Atticus (“Jem”), by their widowed father, Atticus Finch.

Ezra (עזרא in Hebrew) is a unisex forename, or Jewish surname of Hebrew origin, Which means “help” or “helper” in the Hebrew language. The name originated from the Biblical prophet Ezra who authored the Book of Ezra (a book of the Bible).

1960

That’s how Scout Finch describes the steadfastly Southern setting of Harper Lee’s beloved novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Maycomb is a fictional city, but it’s based on Lee’s birthplace and childhood home of Monroeville, in Monroe County, Alabama, where Lee died on Friday.

To Kill a Mockingbird