what does atticus finch represent in to kill a mockingbird?

Question

I am doing another project and i need to know what Atticus symbolizes in this book? If anyone knows anything i can put please respond!!

I have read this book, but i just cant decide if he represents courage, justice or something else

Answer 1

i hated that book, good luck with that

well that person two below me definitely didn't copy and paste *wink**wink*



hey that's plagiarism

Answer 2

To kill a Mockingbird is a great choice, i really enjoyed reading it.
anyway. atticus finch is the Lawyer i guess, although he is white, he hates the discrimination and racial segregation, that's why he took the case of helping that black man who was accused of raping the white girl.
he represents a symbol for justice and equality.
hope i made myself helpful...Good Luck!

Answer 3

I might add he also represents 'fatherhood' since he is a great paternal model from which, I think, any future or present father should read the novel and learn from his words, actions and great mind regarding his ways of taking care of his two children amidst the racism trouble in a rural county in Alabama.

Answer 4

wasn't Atticus Finch the little girl Scout's Father? the Lawyer

Answer 5

What Does A Finch Symbolize

Answer 6

Read the book. You will get a lot out of it. It may not be you favorite book but it is a classic standard in the literary world.

Answer 7

Sorry, but you should really read the book.

Answer 8

Practical Moral Philosophy for Lawyers


The Virtue of Advocacy: The Case of Atticus Finch

Atticus Finch, the Maycomb, Alabama lawyer in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, provides a wonderful literary example of the internalization of zealousness and its ritual re-appearance in a virtuous act of courage. [Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Popular Library, 1960)]

Appointed by Judge Taylor to represent Tom Robinson, a black man charged with the rape of a white woman in 1930's Maycomb, Alabama, Atticus doesn't "decide" whether he is going to represent Robinson. It is not, from what we learn about Atticus, a decision to be made. While the representation of Tom Robinson may have been the most difficult event of his legal career, Harper Lee does not present Atticus to us as a man who struggled over the decision. The implication (at least in its literary portrayal) is that Atticus knew what to do, knew what must be done, and did it. He didn't "weight" the possibilities and dangers of accepting the appointment, he didn't try to determine how the case might effect his political career, or the pressures it might create for his young school age children. Atticus was rational but not a decisionist. He did not act like he was facing a moral quandary, or even that he had a choice to make. (Atticus, when he learns that Boo Radley, instead of Jem, his son, has killed Bob Ewell, does face a dilemma and a decision: whether to protect the reclusive Boo Radley or insure that the "truth" be known about Bob Ewell's death.) Harper Lee has told the story of a lawyer known by his virtue and character rather than his problem-solving and decision-making.

When he takes the appointment to represent Robinson, Atticus does not need to figure out how zealous he wants to be on behalf of Tom Robinson. Atticus represents Tom Robinson zealously because his character, as a person and as a lawyer, makes it impossible for him not to do for Tom Robinson what he would do for any neighbor who sought his services. It is this kind of zeal and this kind of devotion to advocacy that makes the idea of a lawyer something other than the butt of common jokes.

In the account of Tom Robinson's trial the following conversation takes place among regulars of the Maycomb courthouse "club" on the day the trial begins:

"...thinks he knows what he's doing," one said.

"Oh-h now, I wouldn't say that," said another. "Atticus Finch's a deep reader, a mighty deep reader."

"He reads all right, that's all he does." The club snickered.

"Lemme tell you somethin' now, Billy," a third said, "you know the court appointed him to defend this ******."

"Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That's what I don't like about it." [To Kill a Mockingbird, at 165-166]

Atticus, from what we are told and what we know about his character (not just what we read about it but what we know), will represent Tom Robinson zealously notwithstanding the virulent racism of the courthouse regulars and the jury that will be impaneled to hear Tom Robinson's case. We don't need much discussion to conclude that Atticus did the right thing and that it would have been wrong to succumb to the cynicism, hypocrisy, and bigotry necessary to let racists convict Tom Robinson with a real fight.

Atticus's zealousness on behalf of Tom Robinson is a reflection of habit and character, a story of a lawyer whose character cannot be bought by fear of what his neighbors will think or that his children may suffer ridicule. Atticus lives in a racist community, a community where it can be hard to be a good neighbor. Some Maycomb residents (we don't know how many) think that Atticus and his efforts to undo a system that condones racism is the problem. Atticus isn't oblivious to what his representation of Tom Robinson might cost him and his family, but he has the kind of character that leads to choices that don't turn on self-interest. Atticus's zealousness is part and parcel of his character, not just as a lawyer but as a father to Scout and Jem, and a neighbor to those who inhabit Maycomb with him.

If Atticus's story has bearing for us today, and I contend that it does, we might speculate that there will be times when it takes raw courage (and times when courage must be refined and distilled) to be a zealous lawyer, to stand up to a community hell-bent on doing the wrong thing. Atticus's habit of zealousness requires real courage. It takes the courage of character to stand up to a community. It takes courage to do what Atticus did and what you will need to do as a lawyer.

Zealous advocacy for Atticus Finch is a matter of telling the truth. The truth is that Tom Robinson did not rape Mayella Ewell. The truth will not be enough to save Tom Robinson from the savage indifference to human decency and moral blindness that racial bigotry has produced in Maycomb, Alabama. Tom Shaffer argues that Atticus's regard for the truth makes him a hero, a hero because he is not blinded by the prejudices of his community and is able to tell the truth to Maycomb. [Thomas L. Shaffer, The Moral Theology of Atticus Finch, 42 U. Pitts. L. Rev. 181 (1981)]

And how do we know that Atticus was telling the truth? How do we know that racism is morally wrong? We know racism was wrong in Alabama because Atticus, Miss Maudie, sheriff Tate, and Judge Taylor are there to tell Maycomb (and us) about racism and what it cost a community. We don't have to be moral absolutists to believe that something we know today was wrong fifty years ago. Even so, no discussion of Atticus Finch's moral character is replete until we are reminded (by some innocent moral relativist) that we can never say that a community like Maycomb, existing in a different historical period, was wrong to be what it was.

One student, confronted with Atticus, contended that Atticus wouldn't know what to do if he faced the kind of problems that lawyers face today! And what would this moral talk about the limits of zealousness mean to a reader of To Kill a Mockingbird who thinks that it is nonsense to hold Atticus Finch as a hero? Or to a reader of To Kill a Mockingbird who concludes that Atticus is indeed a moral hero, but only because he is "fictional," and while he is of "literary interest" is not of practical significance to those who do their lawyering in the "real world"? Or what would talking about Atticus mean to a reader who looks at the "progress" in race relations since the 1930's of Maycomb, Alabama, and argues that we have less need for the kind of courage that a 1930's lawyer needed?

Atticus is a hero because he stands by Tom Robinson as best he can and does so in a way that allows Tom to show his character and his courage, a moral stance that turns out to be far more costly for Tom than it is for Atticus (as the truth is always more costly for those who are marginalized by a dominant culture).

There are, in communities across the country, lawyers who have the courage and the character to do what Atticus did for Tom Robinson. And it is when we think about Atticus doing what he did, and what he had the character to do, that we think best of ourselves as lawyers. And it is when we think this way of ourselves that we are entitled to the moral acclaim that one is due as a zealous advocate.

It is because Atticus has internalized the ethic of zealousness and can reconcile it with the person he is, that he is able, without anguishing over it, to tell the truth and withstand the pressure exerted on him as he stands against the racists (including his racist neighbors) in his community. One reason we educate future lawyers to internalize the zeal for advocacy is so they can be zealous about truth when it is costly to do so. When advocacy becomes part of our character, as it was for Atticus, we are more likely to know what the truth is and how to tell it when the time comes. As Tom Shaffer and his colleague, the theologian, Stanley Hauerwas said of Sir Thomas More (drawing on Thomas Bolt's story of More in "A Man for All Seasons"we need the skills to speak truth to power. [Stanley Hauerwas and Thomas L. Shaffer, Hope in the Life of Thomas More, 54 Notre Dame Law. 569 (1979)] [Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York: Vintage Books, 1962)]

The problem, of course, is that this same zeal, twisted and perverted, becomes not a source of deserved pride, but a sword turned against colleague and community and a shield against moral criticism.