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Struggle of good vs evil
To kill a mockingbird race relations
To kill a mockingbird race relations
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Good vs. Evil is often seen by many people as the backbone to conflicts and debates throughout history and the present. Many also often assume that one side of a conflict is right and good, and the other wrong and evil. But in reality, good and evil more often than not coexist in the same thing. Children, though, many times cannot see this, and take something as fully right and good or fully wrong and evil. This is shown in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In the book, the main character, Scout, is a young girl growing up in the post-civil war South with her older brother, Jim, and her father, Atticus. Throughout the story as Scout grows up, she encounters many people and events that make her question her knowledge of what is right and wrong. Through characterization, diction, and point of view, Harper Lee illustrates to readers just how good and evil coexist everyday inside all people.
To begin, one of the ways Harper Lee shows this to readers is through characterization. A good example of this is Mrs. Dubose, Scout’s neighbor. Mrs. Dubose is an old, racist, woman who always insults Atticus, a lawyer, for defending a black man in court. After getting mad of how Mrs. Dubose can be so evil towards Atticus, Jim rips up her treasured flower bed. As a punishment, Mrs. Dubose wants Jim to come down and read to her every day for a few weeks. When Jim reads to her though, after a while she begins to shake, then Jim and Scout are sent out of the house. After finishing reading to her, a few months later Mrs. Dubose dies. It turns out Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, and Jim’s reading was helping her get over her addiction. Atticus then tells Jim that she “had real courage.” Jim cannot understand this, because she was such a...
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...il can be inside the same person. Because Harper Lee writes using a first person view, events and the character’s thoughts are more personal to the reader, and this helps when Harper Lee uses this writing element as a way to show the coexistence of good and evil.
Overall, Harper Lee uses the elements of characterization, diction, and point of view to illustrate to readers how good and evil can coexist inside a person. She puts this theme in To Kill a Mockingbird as a message to readers about how good people can do bad things, and how good and evil are both part of the human condition and part of being a person. Even though this is true, she also uses this as a message to readers indirectly telling them to use the good inside themselves, like Atticus or Scout, and help others when they need help.
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
The main theme in To Kill a Mockingbird is the coexistence between good and evil. "There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” (Lee 60) This quote demonstrates a sense of wisdom and cleverness which contrast the other
Childhood is a continuous time of learning, and of seeing mistakes and using them to change your perspectives. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee illustrates how two children learn from people and their actions to respect everyone no matter what they might look like on the outside. To Kill A Mockingbird tells a story about two young kids named Scout and her older brother Jem Finch growing up in their small, racist town of Maycomb, Alabama. As the years go by they learn how their town and a lot of the people in it aren’t as perfect as they may have seemed before. When Jem and Scout’s father Atticus defends a black man in court, the town’s imperfections begin to show. A sour, little man named Bob Ewell even tries to kill Jem and Scout all because of the help Atticus gave to the black man named Tom Robinson. Throughout the novel, Harper Lee illustrates the central theme that it is wrong to judge someone by their appearance on the outside, or belittle someone because they are different.
...t and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice.” [Libba Bray] The character “foils” within Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird add a real meaning of development, and complexity in the story that grasps the readers attention. It can be seen that each pair of characters are present in a way that the readers are able to show the contrast between each pair and can acknowledge and recognize a “good” character from a “bad” one. This contrast is most evident in the way each character deals with a situation. It is essential that, as readers, we do not assume that certain characters are the same due to some of the likeness that they have because each person has their own personality that creates the true image of their individual that is being described. In this world, there will be both good and evil because that is what creates balance in the world.
...ry. It brings all of characters and events and connects them. Harper Lee really wanted to stress the idea of acceptance and innocence. Our world does not give people a chance. People cannot judge a book by its cover or spread rumours and false information. This message also extends to the colored people in the book. Tom Robinson was black, and some people couldn’t respect him for that. If Bob Ewell attempted to kill children, then he also abused Mayella thus making Tom innocent. But he was still found guilty for a crime he never committed. He was a mockingbird as well. Innocence is a privilege, but people abuse it. Gossip can cause guilt, taking away the innocence in people. Therefore, innocence was a strong theme because people need to give chances, and be forgiving. They need to be open-minded. Why kill a mockingbird? After all, it’s just another innocent creature.
Shaw-Thornburg, Angela. “On Reading To Kill a Mockingbird: Fifty Years Later.” Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: New Essays. Meyer, Michael J. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2010. 113-127. Print.
Protecting the innocent is a major theme in To Kill a Mockingbird. It is shown in many ways. Some ways include how Atticus tries to protect Tom Robinson, how Boo Radley saves Jem and Scout, and how Heck Tate tries to protect Boo. Harper Lee may be trying to show how society should protect the innocent through her characters and their actions.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a heroic tale of leadership and courage during racial times. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Atticus, To, Jem and Scout are unfortunately exposed to a really racist and prejudiced society and town. Which ends up causing them to lose a case and really confuse Jem and Scout when they are young. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, it uses characterization to help show a theme of loss of innocence when people are exposed to surprising and unfair situations.
Mrs. Dubose was sitting on her porch when Jem and Scout went by. She stopped them on their way for playing hooky. “It is noon and hot outside, so both of you go inside your house otherwise I will call you principle” # said, Mrs. Dubose. Jem and Scout told that they have been alone to town, but she never believed them. In a sense, Mrs. Dubose worried for the children and at the same time, she was angry at them. She came to know in the morning that Jem broke down Ms. Maudie’s
They saw Mrs.Dubose more as Tom Robinson’s case outbreaks into court. Tom Robinson is the black man Atticus is defending, so every work day Atticus walks past Mrs.Dubose house. Which is “two doors up the street… with steep front steps and a dog trot-hall.” It was not until Jem needed to read to her, when him and Scout got to go inside of her house. “An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold… In the corner of the room was a brass bed and in the brass bed was Mrs.Dubose… There was a marble-topped washstand by her bed.” In her house, Jem begins to leave his safety at home and face society's disapproval, which is symbolically represented as Mrs.Dubose. She represents the racism of the Old South, and Jem had to face his problems as he begins to come of age as a mature man.
There has always been a strong intuition like belief, that Harper Lee used true accounts from her own childhood as an inspiration to create her credible award-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee retells the events that she encountered during this time of prejudice through the eyes of an innocent child, Scout Finch. Lee uses her childhood and the events surrounding her juvenile years to construct many aspects of To Kill a Mockingbird: primarily, the main character, Scout Finch, Tom Robinson’s unfair trial, and the racism occurring in the Southern states.
Harper Lee’s purpose for writing this book was to show her audience moral values, the difference of right versus wrong. She does this very effectively by making Scout, the main girl in the story, and Jem, her brother, seemingly innocent, because they have not seen evil this early in their lives. The evil comes later when Mr. Ewell attempts to kill both Jem and Scout. Once the two children see and experience this evil, it changes their lives forever. They begin to see how the world can be different from their views.
Harper Lee has a number of characters that contribute to the novel and violent scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird, some that have meaning and some that do not. Some characters that appear often and some that have a minimal role in being seen in the novel, but the characters that do not appear often seem to have the biggest impact on the novel. There are three characters that are looked down on by society around them, one because of race and two because of their morals. Society disregarded these people simply because they were afraid that they could be like them and the unknown. Lee uses violence and alienation to help depict the things that are wrong within the small society.
Atticus, her father courageously accepted to defend Tom Robinson, a black man being falsely accused of raping a white girl. Mr. Finch was only doing his job and not discriminating against this man. This novel expresses various themes and diverse topics to think about, including the moral nature of human beings, whether people are essentially good or essentially evil. The coexistence of good and evil is defined as a policy of living peacefully with other nations or religions also to exist together at the same time in harmony. In the novel Harper Lee uses the coexistence of good and evil to prove that people aren’t always honest. Hidden traits are meant to be revealed comparable to secrets that are meant to be told.
Mrs. Dubose is overtly racist, representing the ‘bad’ part of the town. In chapter 11 of To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Dubose repeatedly insults Jem and Scout because their father, Atticus Finch, is defending a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape. The theme is revealed in chapter 11.
“I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it-seems that only children weep.” (285) In To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, duality is used to exemplify good and evil coexisting with each other. The two main characters in the book, Scout and Jem, are siblings. They live in Maycomb County, a small town in which many people of dual personalities exist. These people show that good and evil do in fact coexist with one another. Scout and Jem change as they grow older. By the end of the book, Scout starts to learn that not everybody is innocent and good. On the other hand, Jem becomes more like his father, in understanding that wherever good exists, so does evil. The idea