The World's Mockingbirds, By Michael Leopanto

The novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” By Harper Lee, is a story set in the early 1930s that teaches life lessons about both prejudice and contradiction while explaining the way the people of Maycomb, Alabama suffered from both a Nation-wide depression and a form of prejudice so strong it literally causes them to act as a mad dog. Throughout the tale of a carefree family living in a mixed up world both the reader and the protagonists learn that life is not always easy when people begin to suffer from their own beliefs. The pure prejudice toward others and toward the African Americans of Maycomb county teaches a lesson itself about how far people will go to stand up for their beliefs whether they are morally in sync or not. Just by reading the novel you get a feel for how people actually think and how they act in their own moral aspects. The novel also shows that you should never harm someone who does absolutely nothing to you and who would never harm anyone else through the Tom Robinson trial. One thing to take from this novel is that people overreact to a situation do to categories in class and in life itself, and that is immoral!

"I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue-jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." This quote defines the concept of morality over prejudice by actually taking a relatable topic and expressing to the reader that it is important to showcase virtue and integrity in their everyday life.

The beginning of the quote expresses that a moral person would rather everyone take their anger and wrong views out on unimportant objects rather than people. The second part of the quote sincerely expresses that a moral person would not ever accuse a harmless person and a moral person would stand up for a situation when an immoral person is accused of something and almost let off the hook. In this quote a mockingbird symbolizes a moral person while a blue-jay symbolizes an immoral person. After all a blue-jay always picks at crops, nests in the wrong places, and causes everyone trouble, a mockingbird does not!

In all honesty this quote has became one of my favorite life quotes to live by. If everyone in the world lived by the symbolic views this quote expresses the world would be a much better place to live in. It is wrong to attack a person who has never done anything to the world but “make beautiful music for us to enjoy” or help us in every way possible. If our world just as the world of Maycomb considers all to be equal why are hundreds of lives around our planet terminated each year due to some sort of bullying situation! If all are equal why do some people enter their job or school building each day scared to speak up for our beliefs. These are the people in our world who could make beautiful music... these are the people that could have one day stopped all war and started the beginnings of world peace if they weren't afraid to speak up because of the man holding the gun. Because of our wrongful accusations, because of our prejudice, and because of our blindness to the truth they are muzzled, or they could be dead.  These are the mockingbirds of our world, these could have been our leaders!