Atticus Finch
Equal justice under law
Conscience and due process.
Reformist Civil LibertarianOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Civil Libertarian hall →- Role
- Lawyer (fiction)
- From
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Region
- United States
- Social band
- Reformist
- Placement
- +40 · −26 · +58
§ Where Atticus Finch stands
3 axesAtticus lives within the modest market economy of a Depression-era county seat, earning his living as a lawyer and accepting payment in kind from the farmer Walter Cunningham, who settles his bill in stovewood, hickory nuts and turnip greens. He explains that the Crash hit farmers hardest, yet admires the Cunninghams for taking nothing they cannot pay back, a respect for self-reliance rather than a programme of redistribution.
Atticus believes in the rule of law and the rights of the accused, and he trusts courts and juries even when they fail. He sits outside the county jail to shield Tom Robinson from a lynch mob and, in his closing argument, calls the courts the great levellers in which all men are created equal; his faith lies in reforming the system from within rather than defying it.
For its setting, Atticus's real defence of a Black man accused by a white woman is a quietly radical act, and he tells Jem that any white man who cheats a Black man is trash. Yet he remains a respected member of Maycomb's establishment, courteous to its bigots and hoping chiefly that his children escape what he calls Maycomb's usual disease: a gradual reformer, not a crusader.
How close are you to Atticus Finch?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
FictionAtticus Finch is the widowed lawyer at the centre of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960 and set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. Seen through the eyes of his young daughter Scout, he is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black farmhand falsely accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. He shows in court that the charge cannot be true, yet the all-white jury convicts Tom, who is later shot dead while trying to escape from prison.
Atticus became American fiction's best-known emblem of the conscientious lawyer and of white opposition to racial injustice, a status sealed by Gregory Peck's Academy Award-winning performance in the 1962 film; in 2003 the American Film Institute named him the greatest hero in American film. Critics have long noted that he challenges a verdict rather than the Jim Crow system itself, and Go Set a Watchman, written before Mockingbird but published in 2015, portrays an older Atticus at a segregationist citizens' council meeting, which unsettled his heroic image.
Notable for
- 01Hero of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
- 02Defends Tom Robinson
- 03Icon of legal conscience
Key works & moments
- 1960Harper Lee publishes To Kill a Mockingbird; it wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.
- Part OneAtticus shoots a rabid dog in the street, revealing his hidden marksmanship to his children.
- Part TwoHe faces down a lynch mob outside the Maycomb jail to protect Tom Robinson.
- Part TwoDefends Tom at trial; the all-white jury convicts him despite the evidence.
- 1963Gregory Peck wins the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Atticus on film.
- 2015Go Set a Watchman shows an older Atticus at a segregationist citizens' council meeting.
In Atticus Finch's words
“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
§ Minds closest to Atticus Finch
All minds →
§ Also in the Civil Libertarian hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is Atticus Finch's political ideology?
Atticus Finch is a principled small-town liberal who believes in equal justice under law: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Reformist Civil Libertarian. Economically he sits on the market side of centre (+40), a self-employed lawyer who prizes self-reliance in a Depression-era market town. On governance he leans libertarian (−26), defending due process and the rights of the accused against the mob, and socially he is progressive (+58) for his setting, defending a Black man against a racist community while remaining a gradual reformer.
Is Atticus Finch left-wing or right-wing?
He reads as a moderate liberal of the old South rather than a figure of the left or right. In the novel he stands against racial prejudice, defends due process and urges his children to see the world from other people's point of view, values later embraced by the civil rights era. But he is also a pillar of the local establishment, a member of the state legislature who works within Jim Crow institutions, and Go Set a Watchman (2015) depicts an older Atticus hostile to desegregation, complicating his liberal reputation.
Was Atticus Finch a racist?
Not in To Kill a Mockingbird, where he risks his standing to defend Tom Robinson and hopes his children will escape the town's racial prejudice. The question arose after Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman appeared in 2015: written before Mockingbird, it shows Atticus in the 1950s attending a citizens' council meeting and voicing paternalistic, segregationist views to his adult daughter. Readers disagree over whether the two portraits can be reconciled, and many argue that even the original Atticus confronts a single injustice rather than the Jim Crow system.
Which minds are closest to Atticus Finch?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Atticus Finch are Roger Baldwin (98% alike), Clarence Darrow (98% alike) and Ida B. Wells (97% alike). The furthest is Gregor Strasser (15% alike).