What Is Mob Mentality In To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mocking Bird Historical Paper Mocking birds and racism are related? Well no, but when it comes to the book To Kill a Mockingbird racism can be found all over. In this paper I will be talking about the Jim Crow laws, Mob mentality, the Scottsboro trials, and how each of these can be found in Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird. The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws are laws that took place in between 1877 to the mid 1960s (Pilgrim). These laws are of segregation between blacks and whites to give blacks fewer rights. Christians and Ministers believed that Whites were the chosen people; Blacks were lesser people and only suppose to be servants, and that God Supported Ra …show more content…

Mob mentality is the actions of what people do in large groups. Mob mentality can be defined as the unique behavioral characteristics or actions that people do in big groups, usually with little amount of individual thought (Smith). One reason why people do these actions is that people often do what others are doing around them, so they don’t feel left out, or sometimes feel like they have to do what others are doing around them to fit in (Smith). Another reason people do these actions in big groups is that when there around so many other people they don’t feel like they are consequences for their actions since they are with so many other people (Smith). The longer people are doing these actions in a mob, the harder it is for people to remember why they started the mob in the first place (Edmonds). Examples of the actions are, destroying property, or hurting people (Edmonds). Mob mentality can be seen in To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways. One example of this is people in a big group vandalizing a building, or attacking someone, they feel they can do this and get away with it since they are in a big group. We see this in To Kill a Mockingbird when the mob comes to the jail cell to lynch Tom Robison (Lee 172-174). Mob mentality and Jim Crow laws were not the only thing that had an influence in To Kill a Mockingbird so did the Scottsboro

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