Marginalization of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird

Boo Radley

In Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Boo Radley is a marginalized figure. In a book filled with memorable dialogue and conversation, he is the only central figure who never speaks for himself in the text. Because To Kill A Mockingbird describes social existence in a small town, Boo's status as one who does not openly participate in this social existence is responsible for his marginalization. But I hope to demonstrate that Boo is central to Harper Lee's message in the novel: it becomes clear by the end that Boo, no less than Tom Robinson, is meant to be understood in terms of the statement which gives the book its title: "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" (page 119). The children's idea of Boo basically takes the trajectory of everything that we would define as prejudice: as a result, the story of Boo Radley is a parallel to the story of Tom Robinson. It explains what prejudice is like when racism is not a part of it. In the case of Boo, his social removal from the life of Maycomb puts the children in a position of ignorance: they do not know him, but they have heard rumors. Their lack of direct knowledge is replaced with gossip, fear and mockery, but the way in which the children grow over the course of the novel also involves the way in which they are able to understand Boo Radley better.

In terms of gossip, Jem gets the story from the "neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing." This gossip is clearly not the whole story, as it only involves Boo at the age of thirty-three stabbing "scissors into his parent's leg" (page 13). Jem then expands upon the gossip, turning Boo Radley into a terrifying monster despite the lack of any evidence whatsoever. Jem claims that Boo "dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained -- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time." (page 16). It is clear to the reader that Boo is presumably mentally ill or psychologically impaired, although the children do not know this. Instead, at Jem's instigation, this turns into a "Boo Radley game" in the fourth chapter of the book, in which Jem, Scout and Dill play-act their own versions of the story. But Scout is still inclined to see the game as being prompted by fear: "Jem's head at times was transparent: he had thought that up to make me understand he wasn't afraid of Radleys in any shape or form" (page 51). In all of these details, it is clear that Harper Lee intends us to understand the way in which the demonization of a marginalized figure like Boo proceeds from lack of information and understanding -- the children's ignorance and fear imagine Boo to be a monster, based on prejudice and rumor rather than actual evidence.