To Kill a Mockingbird Essay “Scout," said Atticus, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody." To Kill a Mockingbird is a very powerful book, with many themes and it teaches many life lessons. Such as racism, in this book, the theme of prejudice and racism is embedded throughout the chapters. They teach about racism when an unfair case is pulled to trial, when a mysterious person is in hiding, and when a little girl is growing up and how she is learning and how she deals with racism. It also shows many more bits and pieces of racism throughout the entire book. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the setting takes place in a small town called Maycomb County, with very few people, and not a wide range of them. The African Americans of the town are treated very poorly. In the book there is a trial when the black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of raping …show more content…
Mayella Ewell. Atticus Finch is a white man of Maycomb county and he is defending Tom Robinson. The whole town decides to turn on Atticus for of course, counter working the rest of the white people in town. During the case there was no evidence what so ever that Tom Robinson even touched Mayella Ewells. “Did you call a doctor, Sheriff? Did anybody call a doctor?’ No sir, repeated Mr. Tate.” No evidence of rape was concluded. There was no actual proof of rape at all, and even if Mayella was tested, I doubt Tom Robinson would be linked to it. In the book when Tom is telling his story he says that he has helped Mayella many times. He then states the fact that Mayella tried kissing him. After he says he ran before she was able to do so. “Why did you run. I was scared, suh. Why were you scared? Mr. Finch if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared too.” These quotes show that Tom Robinson wasn’t a bad person, he was considerate and helped Mayella, just because of his skin color they accused him of doing such a crime. When Mayella and her defendant came up to speak they had no evidence, and none of what they were saying had laid up correctly.Later in the story Tom Robinson is claimed guilty, and later on shot and died. This shows racism to a mass extent. The fact that his skin color is different than the rest of the crowd he was treated very poorly and winded up dead for a crime he didn’t commit. Because of racism it had ended the life of an innocent person, because of racism it had a mystery person never leave his house, is he even still alive, was he ever even there? Boo Radley, the town’s gossip, the children’s hoax and rumors.In the eyes of the children in Maycomb County Boo Radley was half man, half monster.
Boo Radley hasn’t been seen by many people many claim that he is dead and hasn’t been carried out of his house. There is no outside activity from the Radley’s house. At the end of the book they interact with Boo Radley. “They were white hands,sickly white hands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishly against the dull cream wall in the dim light of Jem’s room.” They had described Boo. They describe him just as a ghost, a hidden figure. Boo has been hidden away, away from all the bad, encaged from the towns disease of racism. He has been hidden away to protect himself. Racism and prejudice changes people, the way they think, the way they live, speak, who they connect with. Racism changes
people. "There's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves—it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time." Scout is about 6 years old, she is growing up in a place where racism is occurring. Children take stuff in easier, they just go along with the rest of the people. At school Scout had heard children say negative things about some people, and called them names, Scout since she was only small thought that was the normal thing to do, since everyone else was doing the same. Scout’s father Atticus had talked to Scout about dealing with people, and how what those people are doing aren’t right, they are no good people and that Scout should not be like them. “Scout," said Atticus, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody." Atticus wants Scout to grow up well, to be well mannered and to treat people right, with equality and fairness. Throughout this book Scout is growing up and is learning about the real world, and how racism affects her life too. Scout is learning about prejudice and racism and she is learning a path that can help change the future. In conclusion, racism is shown throughout the book To Kill a Mockingbird. This book teaches and shows many things and is such an incredible life lesson. The book shows how prejudice behaviors are shown and the bad product from it. But this book has many ways it showed prejudice and racism, and it is crazy thinking just how much is taught through this one book.
Back in the time period of To Kill A Mockingbird, blacks were referred to as “niggers”, and blamed for most things, even when they were innocent. An example of this is when a character named Nathan Radley hears someone in his cabbage patches. He shot his gun in the air and when people asked what happen, he automatically told them it was a “nigger”.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee writes about a small Alabama town. This story takes place in Maycomb County, Alabama during the Great Depression. It’s narrated by a little girl called Scout. The book tells the story of a family and their involvement in a trial with a black man being accused of rape. Scout’s father, Atticus is the accused man’s lawyer. In her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses Fire, a Mockingbird and Camellias to foreshadow the loss of innocence.
How would you like it if someone walked up to you and berated you based on the color of your skin? A characteristic like that isn’t even something you can control, so an insult of that nature can leave one furious and oppressed. Discrimination is inevitable in any culture, throughout history, in modern times, and even in ancient times. For example, the oppression and murder of 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the African Slave Trade which occurred for multiple centuries, and more recently, the “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya people in Myanmar, brought on by the government of the Asian nation, all of which are tragedies doomed to happen when history repeats itself and people do not learn
Prejudice is arguably the most prominent theme of the novel. It is directed towards groups and individuals in the Maycomb community. Prejudice is linked with ideas of fear superstition and injustice.
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird sets place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama during the prominent period of racial inequality in the mid-twentieth century. To Kill a Mockingbird explores the transformations that follow one’s coming-of-age alongside the ambivalent morals of the 1950s. Changing the setting would affect the character development, conflict and atmosphere developing a new theme.
The novel’s narrator is a young girl by the name of Scout. Her father, Atticus Finch, is assigned by the Alabama town’s judge to defend Tom Robinson. This stirs up much trouble around the county, as people begin to take sides on the case before it has even come to trial. Scout comes to encounter trouble around school when fellow schoolmates begin to give her grief. In the school yard, Cecil Jacobs announced to the class “that Scout Finch’s daddy defended niggers” (Lee 74). Scout gets into a fight over this because an announcement like that is considered an insult. Later in the novel, Scout even finds hostility within her family. Her cousin Frances said that Atticus is “nothing [sic] but a nigger-lover” (Lee 83). This action is representative of the respo...
the racial hatred of the people. Black people were thought to be inferior to white people and in the 1960s when the novel was written, black communities were rioting and causing disturbances to get across the point that they were not inferior to white people. After Abolition Black people were terrorised by the Ku Klux Klan, who would burn them, rape the women, and torture the children and the reader is shown an example of. this in Chapter 15 where a group of white people, go to the county. jail to terrorise Tom Robinson.
"Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."(Lee 119), This astonishing statement which Atticus had said to his daughter scout in one of their boring days expresses the story of the innocent people that Harper Lee introduced in her wonderful novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Maycomb, the sleepy town in the south of America, where poverty reaches most of the families from privilege families such as the Finches, to the African Americans such as the Robinsons. During this novel, Harper Lee paints a vivid picture of how the bigotry and segregation was spread all over the Maycomb town in Alabama.
This shows that scout has heard the word used at school and assumed that because other people use it, it is not wrong. This demonstrates how racism can be spread across generations. People with racist ideas might not realise that their beliefs are offensive because it is what they have been brought up with. The most obvious example of racism in the book is the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl. After hearing the evidence from both sides it is quite obvious that Tom Robinson is not guilty of th... ...
Scout has been taught not to have any sort of discrimination or a feeling of race superiority over the colored people. Atticus has said on page 144, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything-like snot-nose. It's hard to explain-ignorant trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves." Scout had
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, there are many instances of an extremely ubiquitous problem, even in today’s society, which is discrimination. The book is set in the time of America’s Great Depression, and focuses on three key summers in the lives of Scout and Jem Finch. They are the daughter and son of a lawyer named Atticus Finch, who later in the book takes on the case of Tom Robinson, a black man who is accused of raping a woman named Mayella Ewell. Throughout the novel, the author focuses on the way that the children take in the events and the world around them. Another major character, who is only seen by the children once in the novel, is Arthur “Boo” Radley, who has been turned into the equivalent of a horror story character by rumours spread around the town. Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill have had an obsession with getting him to come
“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird" (119). Here Atticus is explaining that it is a sin to harm the innocent which is a reoccurring theme throughout the novel. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee, that is set in Maycomb County, Alabama in the 1930’s. During this time period, America was facing the great depression and money was scarce. This was also a time period where African-Americans were “separate but equal” under the Jim Crow Laws. This created racial tension in Maycomb County and created a racist “disease” in the town that was referred to as “Maycomb's usual disease”. One of the main characters, Atticus, describes the idea that it is a sin to harm a mockingbird.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was set in Maycomb County, Alabama. It was highly racist and equality was not present at the time. This novel shows the way that black people were treated in the 1960’s such as them; being forced to go to different churches and not being able to go to school. Some black people
One of the biggest issues we face every day is prejudice.In today’s society, many people, just like mockingbirds, are treated unfairly. In Harper Lee’s unforgettable novel “To kill a mockingbird” the moral lesson presented is important in today’s society due to racism that continues to exist in the midst of police shootings and terrorist attacks around the world, the lessons voiced in this book can open minds to what needs to be changed in the world.
The first clear form of intolerance that the readers encounter in To Kill a Mockingbird is racial intolerance. Racial intolerance has been constantly passed down by generation, which dictates how a child is taught to treat people of different races. This approach does not allow new generations to form their own opinions of their peers that are of different races by getting to know them. As Nesbit said, “If racial prejudices are something that we learn, it means that we can unlearn them as well” (para. 15). This shows that even though the world’s opinions on other races might be only slightly better than they were during the times of To Kill a Mockingbird, and that there is always hope for new generations that can teach the world to look for their own opinions of others. In To Kill a Mockingbird, we can also see how this relates to when Atticus, the father of Scout and Jem, is involved in a trial as an attorney. He is nominated by the judge to defend a black man who is being accused of raping a white man’s daughter in hopes of giving the black man the best chance he has to winning the case and gaining freedom. Atticus says, “There’s a lot of ugly things in