Evil or Good

To Kill a Mocking Bird
By Lauren Hanano
A Day
To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story of a little girl called Scout Finch and her brother, Jem living in the "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. Scout and her brother lives with their widowed father, Atticus. During this time period which they grew up in, racism was still a big deal to most people. At the time, there was also a huge stock market crash which lead to a worldwide business slump. The Finches were one of the fortunate familes because Acticus was a lawyer and they lived reasonably well off in comparison to the rest of society. The Finches’ also had a black cook, Calpurnia, she was the children’s connection between the white people and her own black community.
One summer when Scout was six and Jem was ten, they met a boy named a boy named Dill, who came to spend the summer with his aunt who lived next door for the summer. The three children are both terrified by, and fascinated with the spooky house on their street called the Radley Place. The house is owned by Mr.Nathan Radley, whose brother, "Boo" has lived there for years without ever going outside. They soon become obsessed with trying to make him come out of his home and go through plan after plan, but nothing tends to work and draw him out. The two following summers, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts inside a knothole of a tree right outside of the the Radley place. Several times, they though that the mysterious Boo was making gestures to them, but to their disappointment, never appears in person. Soon the Finch children realize that Boo Radley deserves to live in peace, and they leave him alone.
Atticus father is a respected and upstanding lawyer but when he is assigned to defend innocent, black Tom Robinson against two dishonest white people. Many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove and Atticus knows what is at risk for him but, he also knows that he has to defend this man and do the right thing, or he can't live with himself.
This case turns the whole town against Atticus and Scout has to deal with the other children taunting, even when they celebrate Christmas, and calling her family "nigger-lovers", she is tempted to stand up for her father by fighting but, he has told her not to. For him, Atticus faces men who intent on lynching Tom, but this danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view.
When it was time for the trial, the children were sitting in the "colored balcony" with the town’s black citizens. Atticus provides clear evidence that the accusers, Mayelle Ewell and her father, Bob, are lying. In fact, the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and her father caught her in the act, then she accused Tom of raping her to cover her shame and guilt. Despite the evidence pointing to Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. When a hopless Tom later tries to escape from prison, he is shot to death. In the end of the trial, Jem is shocked and he now has a different perspective of justice.
It seems that the case is finally over and life returns back to normal until the night of Halloween. Bob Ewell feels that Atticus and the judge have made a fool out of him, and he swears to get revenge. On the way home from a party, Bob Ewell jumps at Jem and Scout and attacks them in the darkness. After Jem is badly ingured and his arm is broken, their ghostly neighbor, Boo Radley, rescues Scout and her brother by stabbing Ewell. Boo carries the wounded Jem back to Atticus’s house, where the sheriff, in order to protect Boo, insists that Ewell tripped and fell on his own knife while he was struggling with Jem. After sitting with Scout for a while, Boo disappears once more to his home and never to be seen again.
While standing on the Radley porch, Scout can finally imagine what life must be like for Boo and regrets that they never repaid him for the gifts he had given them. He has become a human being to her at last. With this realization, through the example of their father, they grew to understand that the not everything in the world is always fair and that prejudice is a very real aspect of their world no matter how subtle it seems.Through the events of those two years, Scout learns that no matter their differences, the people of Maycomb County are all people. No one is lesser or better than anyone else because they're all people. She realizes that once you get to know them, most people are good and kind no matter what they seem like on the outside.
Boo Radley, is one of the novel’s "mockingbirds," Boo was a good person that was injured by the evil of mankind. Tom Robinson is also one of the "mockingbirds." He was an important symbol of innocence that was destroyed by evil.
Most things consist of both good and evil. Usually "evil often triumphs, but never conquers." Every story needs a conflict, and the conflict was a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The force of evil could never triumph in the end and ultimate victory for the forces of the good may become greater when it has had to overcome smaller victories of the evil forces. Evil may win a battle every now and then, but good will always have the greater outcome and win the war.