To Kill a Mockingbird - 1617 Words

To Kill a Mocking Bird â€Å"Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking† My considered opinion of this novel in the light of this comment. If Harper Lee had limited her portrayal of prejudice and discrimination merely to the trial of Tom Robinson, a victim of the most virulent form of racial prejudice, â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird† would probably be little more than a historical footnote. Wisely, though, Lee manages to tie racial prejudice to the many other forms of prejudice we all face every day of our life. Remarkably, the novel begins by focusing not on the racial prejudice that dominates much of the story but, instead, on the kind of insidious†¦show more content†¦I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn t supposed to be doing things that required pants. Aunt Alexandra s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea set, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father s lonely life. Scout suffers because she is a â€Å"tomboy† and does not fit others’ stereotypes of what little Southern girls should act like. However, she does realize the prejudice against women when she goes to Calpurnia’s church and hears the minister’s sermon: Again, as I had often met in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen. It seems remarkable that such sexism can pervade the very churches where women seem to be the staunchest supporters. After all, it’s not pure coincidence that every small town seems to need both a church and a bar, now is it? Of course, the reason these forms of prejudice are often overlooked in this novel is that the racism that dooms Tom Robinson when he tries to help Mayella Ewell is much more dramatic. Though racial discrimination seems most virulent at the Ewell’s level, allShow MoreRelatedEssay To Kill a Mockingbird: An Analysis of Discrimination893 Words   |  4 PagesTo Kill a Mockingbird: An Analysis of Discrimination The most important theme of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is author Harper Lee’s tenacious exploration of the moral nature of people. Lee tenaciously explores the moral nature of human beings, especially the struggle in every human soul between discrimination and tolerance. The novel is very effective in not only revealing prejudice, but in examining the nature of prejudice, how it works, and its consequencesRead MorePrejudice in Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird Essays1381 Words   |  6 PagesPrejudice in Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird Works Cited Missing In todays 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 discriminationRead MorePrejudicial issues in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Essay753 Words   |  4 PagesHarper Lees ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ explores the prejudicial issues which plague over the town Maycomb. Harper Lee uses the trial of Tom Robinson a black man accused of rape on a young white girl, Mayella as a central theme to portray the prominence of racial discrimination in Maycomb. 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The Civil Rights movement started to become more active when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. During this period, Martin Luther King, Jr., became the leader of the movement, and the issue began to gai n serious national attention. This isRead MoreInate Evil to Kill a Mocking Bird and Lord of the Flies Essay877 Words   |  4 Pageshumans to do good and evil portrayed in the novels To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Lord of the Flies by William Golding (title subject to change) It is generally known that human beings have the power and the means to help and love one another as well as the complete opposite in hatred and destruction. These two novels deal with the theme of good vs. evil in their own respective ways. One concentrates on the affect of discrimination and negligence and naivety that allows people to respondRead MoreThe Depiction Of Evil And The Heart Of The Story Of Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee Essay1266 Words   |  6 Pagesit, evil has remained embedded within our society. Even in many classics in literature, the depiction of evil as the driving force and the heart of the story are common; this includes Harper Lee’s bestselling novel and social commentary â€Å"to kill a mockingbird†. Harper Lee creates and develops the book to comment on the negative, but also the positive aspects of society. One of this includes the development of the reader s understanding of man’s capabilities to do good but also evil. Through the Read MoreForensic Science: Then versus Now1281 Words   |  5 PagesForensic Science Then Vs. Now In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a 25 year old African American named Tom Robinson was wrongly accused of rape by a white 19 year old woman named Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell accused Tom Robinson of rape to cowardly cover her attempt of seducing Tom. What Mayella did, kissing a black man, was an act of breaking a taboo topic by a society of a small Alabaman town in the 1930s. The defendant, Tom Robinson, was sentenced according to the testimonies of the plaintiffsRead MoreThe Reader Through Representation Of Social Justice1854 Words   |  8 PagesTo Kill A Mockingbird: Positioning The Reader Through Representation Of Social Justice To Kill A Mockingbird is an infamous novel in relation to the ideas of social justice and anti-racism, which the author conceptualised throughout the text. Through the use of symbolism, character vocabulary, and setting, as representation of the deprivation of the four key points of social justice; equity, equality, freedom, and human rights, the author, Harper Lee, positions the reader of To Kill A Mockingbird