Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird" Character Analysis on the character Boo Radley. Essay was designed to define the character and how we thought of him in our own personal way.

Essay by Springerdude11Junior High, 9th gradeA+, September 2008

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Character Analysis Paper

Joe Springer Hr. 3

As Shirley Manson once said, "I don't think they can deal with someone being complex and contradictory; it's not acceptable, you have to be a cartoon, a stereotype". People do not want to get to know people as complex beings, but rather just try and fabricate some big picture about them. Millions of people have tried to teach and show us how stereotypes are almost always false. In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, We learn through the characterization of Boo Radley that one cannot understand how another thinks and sees life without first stepping into their perspective.

Lee describes how the characters act toward Boo Radley to give the reader a better understanding of who he is as a character and prove the overall theme that you can't know someone until you've walked in their shoes. In the book, Lee writes "Of all days, Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

But to climb the Radley front steps and call, "He-y," of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did." (page 9). This quote leads to the impression that that the Radleys are not very social and keep to themselves, denying any request the town has to become social with them. The children infer from this that there is something wrong with the Radleys and make up their own fictitious story about them. Another quote that Lee writes in her book is, "A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked" ( Page 9). Lee here shows the reader how the Radleys are a feared family, and nobody dares to enter their yard, even for the smallest of reasons. This tells of how the...