English Year 10 - To Kill A Mockingbird: Characters

Scout is a very unusual little girl, both in her own qualities and in her social position. She is unusually intelligent (she learns to read before beginning school), unusually confident (she fights boys without fear), unusually thoughtful (she worries about the essential goodness and evil of mankind), and unusually good (she always acts with the best intentions)...

As one of the most prominent citizens in Maycomb during the Great Depression, Atticus is relatively well off in a time of widespread poverty. Because of his penetrating intelligence, calm wisdom, and exemplary behavior, Atticus is respected by everyone, including the very poor. He functions as the moral backbone of Maycomb, a person to whom others turn in times of doubt and trouble...

If Scout is an innocent girl who is exposed to evil at an early age and forced to develop an adult moral outlook, Jem finds himself in an even more turbulent situation. His shattering experience at Tom Robinson’s trial occurs just as he is entering puberty, a time when life is complicated and traumatic enough. His disillusionment upon seeing that justice does not always prevail leaves him vulnerable and confused at a critical, formative point in his life...

Boo Radley is a neighbor who lives on the same street as the Finch family. Boo’s defining characteristic is his literal and symbolic invisibility. A recluse who only comes out at night, Boo becomes a receptacle for the town’s fears and superstitions. The Finch children make up strange and horrific stories about Boo, informed by the gossip of the adults. The reader understands that Boo has been mistreated by his father, who locked him up for a minor infraction when he was a young man, but Jem and Scout believe wild tales about Boo, such as the rumor that he kills the neighbors’ pets.

Calpurnia is the Finch family’s cook, a black woman, and a mother figure to Scout. Scout describes Calpurnia as a strict, demanding, and unsentimental “tyrannical presence.” At the same time, Scout treats Calpurnia with more genuine respect and obedience than the female members of her own family, such as her Aunt Alexandra. Scout doesn’t give much thought to Calpurnia’s personal life outside her work for Scout’s family, but the reader learns that Calpurnia has a had a difficult and painful life, rarely seeing her own children while she took care of Scout and Jem...