One theme in To Kill A Mockingbird is "there is good and evil in this world, and it is sometimes difficult to determine which is which." This is seen from the time Scout and Jem are very young, playing simple imaginative games with good guys versus bad guys, or making up stories about the bad, scary man next door. As they grow older, they learn a lot from their father about where good and bad are in the world, and have to try to come to terms with the fact that while their father holds one opinion, other townspeople have extremely different opinions on what is good and evil.
A motif might be the small country town feeling. The town of Maycomb is holding on to old ideas about race and prejudice, while larger, faster parts of the world are moving past them. There are many stock characters that a reader would expect to find in any picturesque small town, such as the town gossip, the town freak, or the wise man from whom children may seek advice.
A symbol could be the haunted house (the Radley place), which represents evil, or the mockingbird, which represents innocence.
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