One of the most present figure of speech in this passage is repetition.For instance the name Atticus is repeated twelve times, since his characterisation is one of the main themes of the extract, and when his name is not quoted, there are other references to him as simply ‘he’, ‘our father’ and ‘your father’. There is also a lot of repetitions of the world ‘old’, or references to oldness, both of Atticus and the people in their neighbourhood. For example Scout refers to Atticus as ‘feeble’, ‘nearly fifty’ and ‘nearly blind’, which can all be associated with agedness. Miss Maudie also talks about ‘your father’s age’, because he is older than other father’s in town. The neighbourhood and its habitants are also portrayed as quite aged: ‘old’ and ‘settled’ neighbourhood, ‘the folks on our street are all old’, ‘Mrs Dubose is close to a hundred’, ‘Miss Rachel’s old’, and Miss Maudie says she is not ‘being wheeled around yet’ …show more content…
The repetition in question connected with the bird occurs when Miss Maudie is explaining, to Scout, her father’s words. She repeats Atticus exact words ‘it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird’, and she repeats ‘mockingbirds don’t do one thing but…’. Miss Maudie explains to her that mockingbirds do not do anything harmful, but only ‘sing their hearts out for us’, so they are a symbol of innocence. The repetition of those words emphasise the innocence and purity of mockingbirds. This alludes to the novel’s title To Kill a Mockingbird, which foreshadows that harming an innocent is an injustice, as with Tom Robinson’s case. Here Scout is not completely aware of that yet, but she is introduced to the idea that to kill a mockingbird is to destroy its innocence and purity and so it is considered a sin. Thanks to this reference, one understands how Atticus teach good moral values to his kids, and tries to protect good innocent