ARTHUR "BOO" RADLEY
Mr. Arthur Radley, Boo to the children, was the younger Radley son. "Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I [Scout] had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crime committed in Maycomb was his work." When he was a teenager he got involved with the Cunningham's from Old Sarum, the closest thing Maycomb had to a gang. Everyone else that was arrested was sent to an industrial school, but he wasn't because his father promised that he would never give anyone trouble again. For fifteen years he was never heard from again. "Boo was sitting in the livingroom [sic] cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent's leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities," at age 33. He wasn't crazy, just high strung at times. His father refused to send him to an asylum, so he was locked in the courthouse basement for awhile. Arthur Radley stayed inside as much as possible, even after his father died. "Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dines on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were blookstained--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." Boo Radley killed Mr. Ewell in an attempt to save the children's lives.
