Stereotypes In To Kill A Mockingbird

The “timeless novel” To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is not as timeless and worthy of continuation as many perceive. It is filled with many cliches and simplicities and is frankly outdated in usefulness.

In the book the town of maycomb is comprised of many white characters of many of which are characterized to some extent, especially in the terms of the Finches and Ewells. However, on the other side there are many black characters in the story of importance yet are characterized minimally or very stereotypical. But why would a story focusing on issues of race not give the point of view of blacks? Despite the numerous black characters of the story, Harper Lee focuses more on the characterization of white characters over black. One such example

For someone who is an essential character for the entire story he is very little characterized. Another example of poorly and clichely characterizing black characters is seen again with Culprina. In the story she is portrayed as a simple servant in the Finch household and has very little purpose in the story despite the fact she is black and is always around the main character Scout. What does she think of racism or Tom Robinson’s court case? For a character of color and closely associated to Scout we do not hear what she has to say accept small lesson which are often lost to those of characters like Atticus and Miss Maudie. We also see the character Zeebo who is the Maycomb trash man who we encounter once while he scrapes Tim Johnson’s body off the sidewalk and again in the black church where he reads since all “but about four folks in First Purchase read”. He is used in the story to fill space as much black characters in this story are used for. Lastly Reverend Sykes in the story is not characterized much and is