Zusammenfassung der Ressource
To Kill a Mockingbird Key Themes and
Quotes
- Prejudice
- "Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks"
- "Why, one sprig of nut-grass can ruin a whole yard."
- "Inside...was a white, waxy, perfect camellia."
- "It won't be many years, Jean Louise, before you become interested in clothes and boys"
- "a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak,
a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak."
- "evidently taking delight in corrupting a child"
- "In our courts all men are created equal"
- "Hypocrites, Mrs Perkins, born hypocrites....At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders"
- "Over here we don't believe in persecuting
anybody."
- Education
- "Miss Caroline caught me writing and
told me to tell my father to stop
teaching me."
- "well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics"
- "wasn't much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra"
- Good Parenting
- "Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny"
- "Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets."
- "if I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in the town"
- "If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial
to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him."
- Bad Parenting
- "Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c'n make me do nothin'!"
- "His curtness stung me."
- "a little bantam cock of a man"
- "like the playhouse of an insane child"
- "You goddamn whore, I'll kill ya"
- Empathy and Understanding
- "You never really understand a person... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
- "Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for her actions."
- "That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me."
- "Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to
people about what they were interested in"
- "It's like bein' a caterpillar in a cocoon"
- "it's because he wants to stay inside"
- "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
- "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."
- Innocence and its Removal
- "did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?"
- "Children...can spot an evasion quicker than adults"
- "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
- "I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way."
- "You haven't even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse."
- "Because you're children and you can understand it"
- "and his shoulders jerked as if each 'guilty' was a
separate stab between them"
- He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds"
- "Will you take me home?"
- Kindness and Courage
- "thought it sensible to save what she valued most"
- "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win"
- "I haven't shot a gun in thirty years-...I'd feel might comfortable if you did now"
- "I wanted you to see what real courage is....According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I
ever knew."
- Racism
- "it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover"
- "Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays."
- "She owned a bright green square Brick and a black chauffeur, both kept in an unhealthy state of
tidiness"
- "You know what we want. Get aside from the door, Mr Finch."
- "just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere"
- "I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!"
- "Jedge, I've asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder."
- "Mr Finch, if you was a nigger like me,
you'd be scared, too."
- "You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?"
- "Cry about the hell white people give coloured folk, without even
stopping to think that they're people, too."
- "that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings..."