Vinnie Rinaldo

Mrs. Dombrow

Honors Literature and Rhetoric

2-10-20

Superstitions of the Radley’s

The book ​To Kill A Mockingbird, ​by Harper Lee, is a book set during The Great

Depression in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama. The book is about a girl named Scout

and her brother Jem and it follows their life in Maycomb. In the novel, ​To Kill A Mockingbird​,

one theme is to not judge people based on what others say. Everyone assumes the Radley’s are

bad people, however, they may not be as bad as people think. Motifs to represent this are

superstitions, boundaries, and secrets and hypocrisies. The Maycomb residents have lots of

superstitions about the Radley family.

People in the town of Maycomb don’t know a lot about the Radley’s, Boo Radley being one of

them. No one knows much about Boo Radley, because he almost never goes outside of the

house, as Scout thought, “Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep

Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time”

(Lee 12). This quote explains that Mr. Radley keeps Boo away from the public for some reason.

Because of this, Jem jokingly thinks that Mr. Radley chains Boo to a bed in the basement most of

the time, so he won’t be seen. Scout and Jem are also superstitious of Boo because they suspect

he was putting things in a tree, as stated by Scout, “Less than two weeks later we found a whole

package of chewing gum, which we enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Radley Place was

poison having slipped Jem’s memory. The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished
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medal… Our biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on

a chain with an aluminum knife” (Lee 68). This explains that Jem and Scout found different

things in the “knot-hole”, and it was in front of the Radley Place. Later in chapter 8, Scout had a

blanket on her back but she didn’t know who put it there, said Jem, “Boo Radley. You were so

busy looking at the fire you didn’t know it when he put the blanket around you” (Lee 82). This

explains that Boo put the blanket around Scout when they were watching a house fire, which

means he came out of the house. Everyone in the town of Maycomb has superstitions about Boo

Radley and the rest of the Radley family, but if they start to know them they could realize that

they aren’t bad people.

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Works Cited