To Kill A Mockingbird Rhetorical Analysis

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I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In this section, the children learn facts about their father, Jem is forced to read to Miss Dubose after killing her flowers, and Calpurnia takes them to her church. Also, Aunt Alexandra moves in to give the children a feminine influence, and Scout helps defend Tom from a mob. I will be characterizing Atticus, and questioning whether Calpurnia or Aunt Alexandra is a better mother figure. I will be characterizing Atticus using two adjectives. The first adjective I will be using to describe Atticus is that he is empathic. First, Atticus always preaches to his kids that you must take into consideration the other person’s situation before you act. This shows that he is not a man to accuse…show more content…
When Jem destroyed her garden, he did not know that she was ill and was not aware of what she was saying. This indicates that when you take the time to understand why someone is acting a certain way, you can avoid doing something you will regret. Lastly, Atticus takes on the Tom Robinson case because he is the only one that is able to look past the color barrier and listen to his side of the story. This means he does not discriminate against anyone based on appearance, but rather what he or she has to say. Not only is Atticus empathic, but also he is pacifistic. First, Atticus tells Scout to stay out of trouble when people start to call him heinous names. This shows that he does not want any conflict to arise because of the decisions he makes. He tells her to keep her hands to her side and fight the person with her head. Also, even though people call him names, he does not fight back. He knows…show more content…
One reason why she is a better mother figure is that she is caring of the children. First, Calpurnia taught her son Zeebo to read even though it was not commonplace for a black person to learn how to read. This shows that she wants her children to succeed no matter the circumstances. Since she wants them to succeed, she is very strict on them when it comes to doing the right thing. She is not strict on them because she wants to enforce rules on them, but instead to make them better people when they grow up. If Scout had ever misbehaved, she would make her write letters to her about why she was acting that way. It shows that she cared about how Scout grew up as a person, not that she enjoyed making her do work out of enjoyment. When the Finch family had Walter Cunningham over for lunch one day, Scout made him out as weird for pouring syrup all over his meal. Calpurnia took her aside to tell her what she was doing wrong, because she did not want her growing up making assumptions about people. Secondly, the reason that Aunt Alexandra would be a bad mother is because she only cares about the family reputation and not caring for the kids. When Atticus takes on the Tom Robinson case, Aunt Alexandra scolds him for disgracing the family reputation. This shows that she cannot look past the fact that he might get a bad reputation for taking the case, instead of the fact he is helping out a person in need. This

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