Literary Trees – Boo’s Oak Tree

Very near to young Harper Lee’s home in Monroeville, Alabama, stood a hollowed-out live oak tree. She used to walk past it on her way to school.

When she came to pen her famous novel, she included that tree, placed outside the home where Boo Radley has been a virtual prisoner for so much of his life. Boo uses the tree to leave small gifts (small soap carvings, pennies, chewing gum, a ball of twine) for Jem and Scout Finch, so the tree becomes a symbol of friendship. The thoughtful gifts left inside it show him to be a kind and gentle man who longs to reconnect with the world, so it comes as no surprise to readers when, at the end of the novel, he saves Scout’s life. The tree is his bridge to the outside world.

Live oak trees have often played an important role in Southern Gothic fiction. Often draped in Spanish moss, they are symbols of endurance and elegance and are often associated with death and the supernatural. Bob Ewell, who has attacked the Finch children, is found dead beneath the tree. Boo has defended the children, and, in the process, Bob is stabbed, but the Sheriff, recognising that Boo has saved their lives, asserts that Bob fell on his own knife. Boo does not need to go from one form of prison to another.