What does Scout want for Boo Radley?

Scout is a little girl who loves to play outside and socialize with neighbors. She can't imagine how anyone would want to stay in the house all day, every day like Boo Radley does. The kids even think that maybe his father forced him to stay inside—maybe even chained him up! Scout asks Miss Maudie why Boo Radley doesn't come out of the house in chapter 5. Miss Maudie simply says that he doesn't want to come out. Scout says, "Yessum, but I'd wanta come out. Why doesn't he?" (44). Miss Maudie explains that Boo's father was a foot-washing Baptist, which means he was very strict, and that might be part of the reason Boo doesn't come outside.

The next thing that Scout wants for Boo is to have friends. In chapter 4 she finds some gum in a knothole of the Radleys' tree. Later the kids find pennies, carved soaps, a medal Boo had won for spelling, and an old pocket watch. Scout doesn't make the connection between the gifts and Boo at first, and thinks it's Miss Maudie who has been leaving them. Yet this is Boo's way of making an effort to have friends. Then, when Mr. Nathan Radley fills up the hole with cement, their lines of communication with Boo are cut off and Scout cries (chapter 7).

For the most part, though, Scout probably wants Boo Radley to be understood by the community who makes him out to be a neighborhood bogeyman or phantom. She and Boo share a common experience of being misunderstood and not accepted for who they are. When Atticus reads The Gray Ghost to Scout after Boo saves the children's lives from Bob Ewell's attack, she makes a connection between a character in the book and Boo Radley:

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things. . . Atticus, he was real nice. . ."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them" (281).

The above passage is about a character in a book, but it also relates to Boo Radley. One of the main themes surrounding Boo is that he is misunderstood and gossiped about because he is different from other people. People say he's the reason for anything bad that happens in Maycomb, for example, but this isn't true. It's not right for people to use Boo Radley as a topic for entertainment, either. Scout learns that she must get to know someone before passing judgment, and she wishes for Boo's sake that everyone would do that for him.