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Some of the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee are Scout Finch, Jem Finch, Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Dill Harris, Calpurnia, Aunt Alexandra, Bob Ewell, Mayella Ewell, and Tom Robinson. Other characters in the text are Miss Maudie, Heck Tate, Mr. Dolphus Raymond, and Mrs. Dubose.
In this section, we shall look into these and several other characters in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Jean Louise “Scout” Finch
Scout is the young, tomboyish narrator of the story, who frequently gets into trouble with her Aunt Alexandra for wearing overalls and resisting traditional feminine expectations. She is precociously intelligent, having learned to read early in life simply by sitting in her father’s lap and following along as he read the evening newspaper.
As she matures, she struggles to understand the hypocrisies of her town, such as when she questions how her teacher can hate Hitler for persecuting the Jews when she also makes racist comments about Maycomb’s Black citizens.
She also demonstrates moments of unintentional courage, such as when her innocent conversation with Mr. Cunningham about his son shames a lynch mob into leaving the county jail peacefully.
Over the course of the novel, she learns lessons in empathy. She masters her father’s advice to truly understand a person by climbing into their skin and walking around in it when she finally stands on Boo Radley’s porch.
Jeremy Atticus “Jem” Finch
Jem is Scout’s older brother, who deeply feels the moral injustices of Maycomb and whose left arm is badly broken at the elbow when he is attacked at nearly thirteen years of age.
He possesses a strong sense of pride and a slow fuse. This is instantiated when he violently destroys Mrs. Dubose’s camellia bushes after she hurls vicious insults about Atticus defending a Black man. As a punishment for his destructive outburst, he is forced to read to Mrs. Dubose while she battles a morphine addiction.
Jem is deeply traumatised by the racial injustice of Tom Robinson’s guilty verdict. He weeps angry tears and repeatedly mutters that the jury’s decision was “not right.”
As he grows older, he begins to mature and understand the complexities of human nature. He comes to the understanding that Boo Radley stays shut up in his house simply because he wants to avoid the cruelty of the outside world.
Atticus Finch
Atticus is a widowed lawyer and state legislator who raises his two children with a calm, courteous detachment. He is tasked by Judge Taylor to defend Tom Robinson and does so with absolute dedication. He argues to the jury that the court is the one great leveller where all men are created equal.
Although he faces intense criticism, vile insults from neighbours, and even a lynch mob because he defends Tom, Atticus refuses to abandon his moral principles. He demonstrates true courage both inside and outside the courtroom.
He is actually the “deadest shot in Maycomb County” but hides this talent from his children because he feels God gave him an unfair advantage over living things. He only shoots a rabid dog when absolutely necessary.
Atticus is the moral compass for his children. He constantly reminds them to understand other people’s perspectives by walking in their shoes.
Arthur “Boo” Radley
Boo is a reclusive neighbour who is the subject of terrifying rumours among the children after being confined to his house by his family for decades following a teenage prank. Despite his fearsome reputation as a “malevolent phantom,” he is actually a gentle man who secretly leaves small gifts like soap dolls, a spelling medal, and pennies for Scout and Jem in the knot-hole of a tree.
His quiet kindness is further demonstrated when he slips a warm blanket around Scout’s shoulders while she is distracted by Miss Maudie’s house fire in the freezing cold.
In the novel’s climax, Boo proves to be a silent protector by emerging from his house to rescue the children from Bob Ewell’s murderous attack. He kills Ewell with a kitchen knife in the struggle.
When Scout finally meets him face-to-face, she discovers he is a timid, pale man with feathery hair and a childlike demeanour who gently asks her to walk him home.
Charles Baker “Dill” Harris
Dill is a highly imaginative boy who visits Maycomb every summer to stay with his aunt, Miss Rachel Haverford. He is described as a “pocket Merlin” whose head teems with eccentric plans. In one of his visits, he becomes obsessed with devising ways to draw the reclusive Boo Radley out of his house.
Dill eventually runs away from his home in Meridian to Maycomb because he feels deeply neglected by his mother and new stepfather, who he claims buy him toys but do not actually want to spend time with him.
He possesses a deep sensitivity to injustice, famously bursting into tears during the trial because he cannot stand the hateful, sneering way the prosecutor cross-examines Tom Robinson. His presence represents the innocent, imaginative world of childhood that Jem and Scout slowly leave behind as they confront Maycomb’s prejudices.
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Calpurnia (“Cal”)
Calpurnia is the Finch family’s devoted Black cook and housekeeper. She is a strict but loving maternal figure for Scout and Jem since their mother passed away. She is unusually educated for a Black woman in Maycomb, having been taught to read using a copy of Blackstone’s Commentaries given to her by Scout’s grandfather.
She navigates a “double life” with ease. She speaks proper English with the Finches while she deliberately adopts the local dialect when she is with her friends at First Purchase church to avoid putting on airs.
She takes Jem and Scout to her church. She fiercely defends their presence against a contentious congregation member named Lula. This illustrates her deep loyalty to the Finch children.
Atticus sees her as a faithful member of the family and staunchly defends her position in the household against Aunt Alexandra’s attempts to fire her.
Aunt Alexandra
Aunt Alexandra is Atticus’s sister who comes to live with the family to provide Scout with a proper “feminine influence” and to instill a sense of family pride in the children. She is an incurable gossip who is deeply obsessed with social class, hereditary “streaks,” and Maycomb’s rigid caste system.
She clashes frequently with Scout. She demands she wear dresses instead of overalls. She also strictly forbids her from inviting Walter Cunningham to the house because she considers his family to be “trash.”
Alexandra shows genuine compassion and distress for Atticus when the trial and Tom Robinson’s death take a heavy emotional toll on him. She also proves capable of grace under pressure, as evident in how she pulls herself together to host her missionary circle with dignity immediately after learning of Tom’s violent death.
Bob Ewell
Bob Ewell is a belligerent, ignorant man whose family lives in extreme squalor behind the town garbage dump. He survives on relief checks that he often spends on green whiskey, leaving his numerous children to scrounge for food in the dump.
He falsely accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter, Mayella, likely to cover up the fact that he violently beat her himself when he caught her kissing a Black man.
Ewell is furious that Atticus exposed him as a liar in court. So, he seeks cowardly revenge by spitting in Atticus’s face on the street and harassing Tom’s widow, Helen.
His vindictive nature leads to his demise when he attacks Jem and Scout in the dark. It results in his own death when Boo Radley intervenes with a kitchen knife.
Mayella Ewell
Mayella is Bob Ewell’s nineteen-year-old daughter who lives a desperately lonely life with no friends but with intense domestic responsibilities taking care of her younger siblings. She tries to bring some beauty into her squalid surroundings by carefully tending to six chipped-enamel jars holding brilliant red geraniums in her trash-filled yard.
She takes the stand to accuse Tom Robinson of assault, but her testimony is contradictory. She becomes furious when Atticus treats her with basic courtesy because she thinks he is mocking her.
Atticus points out to the jury that her guilt over breaking society’s rigid code by tempting a Black man drove her to falsely accuse him in order to destroy the evidence of her offense. Her false accusation condemns an innocent man to death.
Tom Robinson
Tom is a twenty-five-year-old, hard-working Black man who is falsely accused of rape by the Ewell family. He is physically crippled, having torn the muscles loose from his left arm in a cotton gin accident when he was a boy, making his arm entirely useless.
He testifies that Mayella actually invited him inside to do chores, made advances toward him, and that he fled out of sheer terror when her father caught them. He makes a fatal error on the stand by admitting he felt sorry for Mayella Ewell, a sentiment that the prejudiced white jury cannot tolerate from a Black man.
Tragically, he loses hope in the justice system after his conviction and is shot seventeen times and killed by guards while desperately trying to climb a prison fence.
Miss Maudie Atkinson
Miss Maudie is a sharp-witted widow and neighbour who hates spending time indoors. She prefers to tend to her garden in men’s coveralls. She is a steadfast friend to the Finch children. She regularly bakes them cakes. She allows them to play in her yard. She also offers them mature, honest insights about their father’s honourable character.
When her house tragically burns down in the winter, she refuses to grieve over it. Instead, she remains optimistic and plans to build a smaller house with more room for her beloved azaleas.
She has a formidable command of scripture, which she uses to expertly shut down the hypocritical “foot-washing Baptists” who criticise her lifestyle. She acts as a moral voice in the community, like when she quietly defends Atticus’s efforts at the missionary circle tea. She reminds the children that Atticus is one of the rare men born to do unpleasant jobs for society.
Mr. Heck Tate
Heck Tate is the sheriff of Maycomb County who is tasked with keeping the peace and investigating the Ewell’s initial claims. Though he is an officer of the law, he recognises his own limitations, he famously hands his rifle to Atticus to shoot a rabid dog because Atticus is a much better shot.
He testifies during Tom Robinson’s trial, where he reluctantly confirms that Mayella was beaten on the right side of her face and that no doctor was ever called. His testimony helps Atticus establish Bob Ewell’s guilt.
In the end, Sheriff Tate adamantly refuses to expose Boo Radley’s role in Bob Ewell’s death. He argues that dragging a shy man into the limelight would be a sin. He officially reports that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife, deliberately bending the law to protect an innocent man from the destructive gratitude of the town.
Mr. Dolphus Raymond
Mr. Dolphus Raymond is a wealthy white landowner from an old Maycomb family who prefers the company of the town’s Black citizens. To avoid the constant judgment and questioning of his prejudiced neighbors, he deliberately pretends to be the town drunk. He is frequently seen weaving around the square, sipping from a paper sack that people assume contains whiskey, though it actually only holds Coca-Cola.
During the trial, he comforts a distressed Dill. He explains that his fraudulent behaviour simply gives the town a reason they can latch onto for a lifestyle they cannot understand. Through his interactions with the children, he provides a profound commentary on the “simple hell” that white people give coloured folks without a second thought.
Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose
Mrs. Dubose is an elderly, deeply prejudiced woman who lives two doors up the street from the Finches and frequently hurls vicious insults at the children as they pass. She is confined to a wheelchair and is battling a severe morphine addiction, a pain-killer initially prescribed by her doctor.
After Jem furiously destroys her prized camellia bushes in retaliation for her cruel remarks about Atticus, his punishment is to read to her every afternoon for a month. Unbeknownst to the children at the time, these reading sessions are deliberately used to distract her from her pain as she bravely breaks her drug addiction before her death.
Atticus holds her up to his children as the absolute epitome of real courage, explaining that true bravery is knowing you are licked before you begin but seeing it through anyway.
Uncle Jack (John Hale Finch)
Uncle Jack is Atticus’s eccentric younger brother, a doctor who lives in Nashville and visits the Finch family every Christmas. He frequently entertains the children with long, rambling tales and amuses them by teasing Miss Maudie with mock marriage proposals.
During one Christmas visit, he severely punishes Scout for punching her cousin Francis, doing so without first listening to her side of the story. Scout later explains to him that he does not understand children because he failed to ask for her perspective, a lesson he humbly accepts and shares with Atticus.
Atticus subsequently uses a late-night conversation with Uncle Jack as an opportunity to indirectly explain to an eavesdropping Scout the trials they will face during the upcoming Tom Robinson case.
Mr. Link Deas
Mr. Link Deas is a prominent Maycomb citizen and the steady employer of Tom Robinson. He demonstrates exceptional moral courage when he disrupts the quiet courtroom during Tom’s trial to loudly declare that Tom has worked for him for eight years without causing a speck of trouble.
Although Judge Taylor furiously ejects him from the courtroom for this outburst, Mr. Deas’s loyalty to the Robinson family does not end there. After Tom’s death, he deliberately creates a job for Tom’s widow, Helen, even though he does not truly need the extra help, because he feels terrible about the verdict. When he discovers that Bob Ewell has been aggressively harassing Helen on her walk to work, he fiercely threatens to have Ewell arrested, effectively putting an end to the intimidation.
Miss Stephanie Crawford
Miss Stephanie Crawford is Maycomb’s resident “neighbourhood scold” and primary source of unverified gossip. She is the chief architect of many of the terrifying rumours surrounding Boo Radley, including the claim that she once woke up to find him looking through her window in the middle of the night.
She enthusiastically inserts herself into the town’s drama. She rushes to the courthouse to observe Atticus’s defence and later breathlessly relays the story of Bob Ewell spitting in Atticus’s face.
Despite her busybody nature, she is deeply integrated into the town’s social fabric and regularly attends Aunt Alexandra’s missionary circle meetings. When Miss Maudie’s house burns down, Miss Stephanie takes her in, though Miss Maudie suspects it is partly to steal her famous Lane cake recipe.
Mr. Braxton Bragg Underwood
Mr. Underwood is the sole owner, editor, and printer of The Maycomb Tribune. He spends his days at his linotype accompanied by a jug of cherry wine. Although Atticus notes that Mr. Underwood holds intense prejudices and despises Negroes, his actions demonstrate a complex sense of justice. During the tense standoff with the lynch mob at the Maycomb jail, it is revealed that Mr. Underwood was secretly covering Atticus the entire time from his office window with a double-barreled shotgun.
Following the tragic death of Tom Robinson, he pens a fiercely bitter editorial that ignores the legal nuances of the trial. Instead, he simply likens the killing of a crippled man to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children.
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Related:
- Plot Summary and Setting of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Themes in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Narrative Devices in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Study Guide: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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