Prejudice in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

Prejudice in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

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In today's society men, women and children experience prejudice in

their lives, either as victims themselves or being guilty of using

prejudice towards others due to differences between them. Prejudice is

a preconception of a person based on stereotypes without real facts

and discrimination based on gender, age and skin colour. In the novel

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee isolates characters and depicts ways

prejudice is used. She also demonstrates the evils of prejudice and

the negative consequences that lie in the city of Maycomb. By taking

the reader, step by step, through various real life situations, and

analyzing the impact of prejudice on people's lives, she manages to go

to the root of the problem in attempting to eliminate prejudice.

In To Kill a mockingbird, Lee depicts the ways of how prejudice is

demonstrated based on discrimination by gender, age and skin colour.

These different types of prejudice are illustrated in the book and

show how awful it is to judge others on these grounds.

All men and women are created equal and have the same rights.

Prejudice against gender lurks in the city of Maycomb. Mrs. Maudie

experiences this unfairness in the novel due to the fact that she is a

woman. "Miss Maudie can't be on a jury because she's a woman" (Lee

221) is a fact that cannot be contradicted in Maycomb County. The

prejudice is against women. Townsmen think that women are frail and

emotional so they will not be able to witness such ...

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...ingbird, Harper Lee,

through the portrayal of various characters, depicts the uses, causes

and negative consequences of prejudice. Lee strips the book right down

to the bare wire and exposes the problems of prejudice and measures

taken by the characters to eliminate the evils of prejudice.

"You'll see white men cheat black men everyday of your life, but let

me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man

does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how

fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash…don't fool

yourselves - it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to

pay the bill for it." (Lee 220-221).

Prejudice is atrocious and one must strive to eliminate it at all cost

from the face of this world in order to achieve real freedom, justice

and peace!