Hate, poverty, violence and mockingbirds. All of these resided in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930's. The mockingbird is a peaceful, beautiful, and innocent bird, it goes throughout its day singing and scavenging not causing anyone harm. Yet, it is still pursued by young children in the town. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee utilizes the innocence of the mockingbird and the turmoil in Maycomb to symbolize how the world's evil effects every one of our lives and the initial judgment, we pass on others; causing the unfair judgment and pursuit of innocent people, she uses Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Tim Johnson to do so.
Boo Radley is overall an innocent and peaceful character. Yet he is ridiculed, bullied, and pursued by both adults and children of the town. He is pursued by Jem just as the mockingbird. Boo is Maycomb's most talked about mystery. Why such a mystery? Boo was rarely seen due to all of the town's hate towards him, though teeming with innocence he was accused of many things. Actually just about anything that went wrong in Maycomb was falsely traced back to Boo. All the children in the town are afraid of him and the adults likewise, so much so that the children would run past the Radley's house every day and wouldn't even attempt to retrieve a ball that ventured into the Radley's yard. Rumors swirled around the schoolyard that if you ate a pecan fallen from the Radley's tree you would surely die. Though Jem and Scout had never laid eyes on him, they were mortified and a bit curious about Boo's existence, and their young imaginative minds fueled their fear. "Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging by his tracks; he dined on raw squirrel and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained-- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar across his face; what teeth, he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped and he drooled most of the time" (16).