Ayoung man gets in a bit of trouble arid is kept prisoner in his own home for years. Young children make him the subject ot'their uanies and the object of their spying. A woman who likes tending her flowers outside is derided as a sinner. A black man accused of rape has rio chance 01 being found innocent. [he town of Maycomb. Alabama in the 1930's, setting tbr [lamer I ee's To Kill a Mockinabird, is sorely in need of sonic empathy, the identification with and understanding of the feelings. motives, arid circumstances of another human being. Iirough the book, the reader sees that having enipathy can cause the world to shed some of its ugly skin and become the kind of place we would want our children to grow up in.
The character who articulates the riced for empathy best is Atticus. father of Scout, the yoUng girl who namTates the stony. Early in the novel, after Scout undergoes a frustrating and painful fir, day of school at the hands ofa new teacher from out of town. Atticus counsels Scout to "Put yourself iii her shoes for a minute." I-fe reminds Scout of the struggles that Miss Fisher had to endure in her first day on the job. in a strange town with people she doesn't know and unfamiliar ways. We see that Scout, mid everyone else, has a basic choice in the way they view one another we can decide that we can't stand sortie of our fellow human beings because they are different, on because they make our lives inconvenient, or we can, cii the other hand, step back arid consider for a moment how the differences in the other people's lives might cause them to act or think differently from us. "Fhough Scout seems unmoved by Atticus's message. I larper Lee has alread~ begun to develop an important theme in ttie 1)00k.
Boo Radley is another character who suffers froni the town's lack ofemnpathy. Scout, her brother Jem. and their friend Dill hear about Boo's strange ways from the adults in their neighborhood.