Throughout TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1960), songbirds are portrayed as innocent creatures -- symbolic of many of the book's characters -- that should never be hurt. As a neighbor explains to Scout, the young narrator of the novel, "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." By the end of the book, Scout has lost her own innocence about the world and understands its inherent unfairness, but surprises her father by applying the metaphor to Boo Radley, the neighbor who recently saved her life and that of her brother by killing their attacker. She agrees to keep what she knows about the death a secret, because sending Boo to jail would be "sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"