When Atticus gives Scout and Jem toy guns he tells them that he would prefer it if they would shoot tin cans, but he knows that they are going to go after birds. He instructs that they can shoot all the birds they want, but they may not shoot mockingbirds because they do nothing but good. Miss Maudie tries to explain this to Jem and Scout by saying:

“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Therefore if a character does nothing but good, he is considered a mockingbird. And if that character is harmed, it is considered a sin. Tom Robinson and Arthur (Boo) Radley are considered mockingbird symbols in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Tom is a mockingbird symbol who helps Mayella Ewell whenever she asks him to when he passes her house because he feels sorry for her and her situation. Mayella raises her siblings all by herself and is abused …show more content…
Because of this, the townspeople, mainly the children, make up all sorts of horrible stories about him and give him a bad reputation. Throughout the novel we come to learn that Boo is actually extremely kind, caring and only ever does things out of the goodness of his heart. This is shown in a variety of ways like when Miss Maudie’s house was burning and Scout was sitting outside, Boo put a blanket around her to keep her warm, when Boo leaves the kids presents in the tree outside his house and when Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout, Boo saves them by killing Bob. Because Boo is a ‘mockingbird’, it is decided to not tell anyone that he killed Bob because then he would have to be put on trial and be in the public eye, which would be harmful to him, and therefore would be like the sin of harming a