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¶ … Kill a Mockingbird
Racism leads to a prejudice that can ultimately affect one's fate through the road of life. Give an entire town reason to hate a certain type of man, and the town can immediately cast that man out for the very color of his skin. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird explores this prejudice in a rural American town in the South. Lee's fictional creation of Maycomb, Alabama showcases a world where racism runs rampant, to the point of unfairness in the justice system, and opens the reader's eyes to a society where the color of one's skin determines one's town rank. This viewpoint is shown tremendously through the trial of Tom Robinson, the mockingbird who is accused of things he did not do; that he is a black man only makes him guilty.
Maycomb is fashioned much like that of an actual Southern town during the Great Depression; it is "an old town," where there "[is] no hurry, for there [is] nowhere to go,...
A "trashy white man" like Bob Ewell is the lowest rank of white man in the town. Yet it is the black man like Tom Robinson who is at the bottom of this hierarchal ladder. It does not even matter if Tom is the epitome of goodness, pity, and innocence (a harmless "mockingbird," as it were). Tom is a black man, and in Maycomb, all black men are created equal; that is, they are all rotten scoundrels who are expected to rape, steal, and wreak havoc within white society.
This racism is further aggravated when the trial of Tom Robinson is put to Maycomb's justice system. Accused of having raped Bob Ewell's daughter Mayella, Tom receives his only aid in Atticus Finch, the defense attorney for the trial. Because of this staunch purpose to defend the rights of the black man, Atticus is labeled a…
kill a Mocking Bird's Aticus Finch Defined as one of the best novel of the 20th Century, and selling more than "30 million copies around the world" having it's translation in more than 40 languages (Flood), the book "To Kill a Mocking Bird" has been considered as a true reflction of the American society in 1936. The story revolves around the story of the racial differences that exist in the
Lastly, both of the novels impart a common moral lesson to the readers. "There is more to it than meets the eye"... this is just one of the lessons that can be achieved from the said novels. Many of the characters in the novels are not what they truly seem to be. Like for example, most would write off Boo Radley as a reclusive madman, Miss Dubose as a mean
During this time all the defendants remain in prison. Finally, on April 1, 1935, the United States Supreme Court overturns the convictions of Patterson and Norris on the grounds that qualified African-Americans had been excluded from all juries in Alabama, including on this trial. (Johnson, 20) the trials are reflected in the fictional trial of Tom Robinson, which parallels the tensions and prejudices existent between the black and white communities.
Kill a Mockingbird Sociology has tried to inquire into the profound need people invariably feel to classify, to put a label on their fellow humans, to asses where they stand in their relationships with others, to what group they belong. This would not be a bad thing in itself as long as the criteria used for achieving this were free of prejudice. The stratification of the human society goes back several
Scout and Jem are likewise tormented by their classmates because of their father's courageous decision to defend an obviously innocent man. Scout already hates school and feels like a persecuted mockingbird in its controlled, conformist environment. She would rather be playing with her brother and her best friend Dill. School is yet another example of the ways in which society can be cruel and persecutory of people who are
Reasoning Behind the Title: To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird took the form of a novel before its adaptation into a film. This is a work that has a strong literal and metaphorical link to the title. To Kill a Mockingbird is an infinitive phrase that describes an action. The title is a phrase that communicates part of the main theme of the novel. By the time the reader