...Molly Pincince Mrs. Kimmerlein AP English 11 04 June 2018 The Persistence of Discrimination in Modern Society Throughout history, humankind has been plagued by the vice that is racism. Fitting into a crowd is comfortable and familiar, and people who stand out are often ridiculed. The sense of safety that people feel when they are in a group allows them to do things that they wouldn’t normally do. This mob mentality has led to a long history of discrimination in the United States. Harper Lee’s book, To Kill A Mockingbird, speaks of a small town called Maycomb, where young Scout Finch lives. Scout’s father, Atticus, bears a striking resemblance to Harper Lee’s father. This is just one of the many parallels between Monroeville, where Lee grew...
Words: 1694 - Pages: 7
...The story “To Kill a Mockingbird” was written by Harper Lee. Its setting was in Maycomb County, Alabama during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. The story was narrated through the eyes of a child, Jean Louise Finch, who was nicknamed Scout throughout the book. The dominant themes in this story were justice, courage and racism. To Kill a Mockingbird was basically about the story about the lives of two children, Scout and Scout’s older brother Jeremy, nicknamed Jem in the story, who were both the children of Atticus Finch, and their progression of their mentality for childhood to adulthood. This was greatly influenced by their father, Atticus and the case of Tom Robinson in which Atticus was defending Tom. Atticus was a proud and dignified person in Maycomb. Everyone in Maycomb respects him and he also respects himself. When Atticus was given the case of Tom Robinson, because he always wants to do what he sees as being right, he has to take Tom’s case because he sees this as his duty. Although he knows this case was a lost one because of the racial society he lives in where a white person’s words always triumph over a black person’s words, he still tries his utmost best to defend Tom Robinson. “I’ve got to live with myself” is how he explains his determination to Scout. If he didn’t defend Tom, he “couldn’t hold up his head in town.” Because his would have proved that he was as just as racial as the Maycomb folks. Atticus was “the deadest shot in Maycomb County” and...
Words: 780 - Pages: 4
...Throughout the book To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee discusses the effects of discrimination and the toll it takes on people. Through examples of sexism, prejudice, and racism, from the townsfolk of a small town in Alabama, she shows the readers the injustice of many. The victims of discrimination serve as the ‘mockingbirds’ of the story, as said by Atticus,“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” (Lee, 94). In essence, this story demonstrates the loss of innocence of many, especially Scout who is affected by sexism and racism most of all. By far, one of the most evident forms of discrimination present in To Kill a Mockingbird is racism. It impacts the actions of every single character in the book and formulates...
Words: 1020 - Pages: 5
...To Kill a Mockingbird Seminar Essay Guiding Question 2 In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee explains Scout’s coming of age story through a point of view lesson and a lesson about society. After Scout’s first day of school, Atticus justifies Miss Caroline’s extreme behavior regarding Scout’s early reading skills by claiming “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view(Lee 39)”. At this point in the novel, Scout thinks little of what Atticus says and refuses to believe any justification for how Miss Caroline treated her earlier in the day. However, Scout quickly becomes reminded of this lesson time and time again. At the climax of the novel, Atticus justifies Bob Ewell’s reaction of the court proceedings as “some kind of comeback(Lee 292)” when putting himself in Ewell’s shoes. Scout begins to relax, but is not reassured completely by Atticus’ explanation of Bob Ewell’s bland threats. Scout finally truly understands this coming of age lesson when putting herself in Boo Radley’s...
Words: 1354 - Pages: 6
...Popular Literature Ayana Thomas SOC/105 May 14, 2013 Luis Rangel-Ortiz Popular Literature Culture can become a huge part of someone’s everyday life and have a great impact on their well- being. Culture can describe someone’s personality, the way they dress, talk, or the types of foods can identify someone’s culture. Popular culture is something that changes with the times. The way popular culture is today, is very different from who it may have been portrayed many years ago. This paper will not only talk about popular culture in general, but it will analyze a certain piece of work that signifies popular culture. The popular fiction novel that I choose to critique is a very well known book called To Kill a Mockingbird, published by author Harper Lee in 1960. This novel takes place in a small segregated fictional town in the south, called Maycomb, Alabama. Harper based this novel on her life experience growing up in the south as a young child and what it was like to be separated between the whites and the blacks. To Kill a Mockingbird, is about five characters, with Scout, a six year old little girl, and her brother Jem a ten year old boy, their father Atticus, who was a defense attorney for the local courts, and their neighbor Boo Radley. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the era of the Great Depression, and where segregation was a big thing. The book displays what it was like in the 1960’s to defend a African American person and stand up for their rights...
Words: 708 - Pages: 3
...18th, 2015 Brandon McConnell To Kill A Mockingbird If you were to ask me about a book or a hero that was an ethical influence on me, I would tell you that both come from the same book/movie. It would be Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, it is a classic example of heroism and doing the right thing and there is many readers who would agree with that statement. I read this book at the young age of 14 in middle school when I was still developing my feel for the ethics of right and wrong so it made a lasting impact on me growing up and developing as a person. Summarize the book or hero’s life in a few paragraphs; Everyone should know the story of To Kill A Mockingbird but if you don’t, let me share it with you. It happens in a little town of Maycomb, Alabama in the heat of all the racism in the South. In this little town everyone knows each other and everyone knows what happens. The main characters are the Finch family with Atticus, Scout, and Jem in their small house in the middle of Maycomb. Scout is a young girl who grew up with a lot of boys and acts that way in the way she deals with conflict. Jem is the older brother who isn’t really isn’t in the picture a lot but is in a crucial incident of the story with Scout. Atticus is a very well known coveted lawyer; everyone in town knows him and looks up to him as a person and a professional. That was short lived when Atticus did something he knew was right but society said it was wrong very wrong. The name...
Words: 1361 - Pages: 6
...The Essence of Man Being a man comes with many responsibilities. Being a man that people can follow, is something that is being overlooked nowadays. Atticus is a man with many responsibilities, people can follow him and learn how to be beneficial to society from him. Atticus’ importance in To Kill a Mockingbird is by far imperative of all the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird because of the lessons people can learn just from Atticus’ actions in the book. Atticus represents various traits throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, but there is three that stood out the most. The traits that I felt made Atticus a likeable character is consideration, gratefulness, and intelligence. Atticus Finch’s traits of consideration, gratefulness, and intelligence, show how much he impacted To Kill a Mockingbird and other characters in it. The first trait I felt that Atticus expressed throughout To Kill a Mockingbird was consideration. Being considerate is an essential trait...
Words: 748 - Pages: 3
...To Kill A Mockingbird: Overview Vanessa Vigneau English 400 March 20, 2015 Cultural and Literary Significance To Kill A Mockingbird was written during the most critical time periods of racial discrimination, the 1930s. During this time racial prejudice was already an issue, especially in the southern states, but during the Great Depression it escalated even more and the imagery in To Kill A Mockingbird allows the reader to fully understand the impact prejudice had on children and adults. To further explore the cultural significance it is important to also realize that the story time period closely related to the time period in which it was published, 1960. During this time, many were trying to fight Jim Crow laws of segregation and were in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. (2007) This story would seem obvious to some as a coming of age story involving the main character and narrator, Scout, but it was much more involved than a little girl growing up and learning to see things from another’s point of view. This story involves the cultural significance of how people lived in the south in the 1930s and how children and adults were affected by the on-going, ugly, violent prejudice. In the story Scout and Jem are taught by their father lessons about courage and tolerance as it is becoming clear to Atticus, he can no longer shield his children from what is happening in their town. He teaches them to stand in someone else’s shoes and consider the world from that perspective...
Words: 1798 - Pages: 8
...Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel centered around a few years in Jean Louise “Scout” Finch’s childhood, featuring her experiences and the lessons that she learns growing up in the 1930s. Scout and her brother, Jeremy “Jem” Finch, mature in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, in a one-parent home. Their father and aunt, Atticus and Alexandra, raise them with help from Calpurnia, their African American maid. Harper Lee weaves several different themes throughout the novel, but some are more prominent than others. Lee develops the main themes of growth, protection of innocence, and perception throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, disguised in the form of lessons learned during the narrator’s childhood. Harper Lee reveals her theme of growth...
Words: 1632 - Pages: 7
...THE GLENCOE LITERATURE LIBRARY Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee i Meet Harper Lee at the same university. In 1949, however, she withdrew and moved to New York City with the goal of becoming a writer. While working at other jobs, Lee submitted stories and essays to publishers. All were rejected. An agent, however, took an interest in one of her short stories and suggested she expand it into a novel. By 1957 she had finished a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. A publisher to whom she sent the novel saw its potential but thought it needed reworking. With her editor, Lee spent two and a half more years revising the manuscript. By 1960 the novel was published. In a 1961 interview with Newsweek magazine, Lee commented: Writing is the hardest thing in the world, . . . but writing is the only thing that has made me completely happy. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate and widespread success. Within a year, the novel sold half a million copies and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Within two years, it was turned into a highly acclaimed film. Readers admire the novel’s sensitive and probing treatment of race relations. But, equally, they enjoy its vivid account of childhood in a small rural town. Summing up the novel’s enduring impact in a 1974 review, R. A. Dave called To Kill a Mockingbird . . . a movingly human drama of the jostling worlds—of children and adults, of innocence and experience, of kindness and cruelty, of love and hatred, of humor...
Words: 4484 - Pages: 18
...In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the public heavily influences the development of some character’s personalities. Characters such as Tom Robinson, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch are judged by the public purely by their associated stereotypes and outward appearance. Although the public’s opinion contributed to the interpretation of each man, the misjudgement the characters face daily impacts their lives internally, socially and emotionally. Due to family playing a paramount role throughout the novel, influencing the internal workings of the family dynamic, it begins destroying the Finch’s family mentality. This is heavily noted as Jem progresses through puberty. Illustrated clearly when Scout begins seeing her and Jem’s relationship slowly...
Words: 625 - Pages: 3
...“To Kill a Mocking Bird”: Teaching Tolerance Through Empathy Mary Ellyn Fogarty December 8, 2012 America in the mid 1950’s and 1960’s was undergoing a profound social metamorphosis. Events such as, in 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, with the Supreme Court ruling public school segregation illegal, which many believe sparked the civil rights era, in 1956 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, “precipitating the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr.” (To Kill a Mockingbird: Civil Rights Era, 2012), in 1957 federal troops were sent to Little rock Arkansas to protect nine African American students who were going white high school, per the court ordered desegregation of school, were challenging and for some forcing the way in which Americans lived, their beliefs and their treatment of African Americans that had been indoctrinated into their consciousness from the time they were born and many did not understand why this treatment was inappropriate, prejudice and unconstitutional. For some these changes were viewed as not an intrusion or criticism of their way of life but as...
Words: 3144 - Pages: 13
... Monstrosity and heroism are not clear cut, as authors like Mary Shelley and Harper Lee have tries to convey. In her novel Frankenstein, Shelley tells a story of a man who, in his dangerous pursue of knowledge, creates a being that will lead his life to ruin. Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a bildungsroman narrated by a girl whose father attempts to challenge their racist society by defending a black man in court. These two stories discuss heroism and monstrosity through the ordinary heroism of a monster, the courage of those disapproved by society (Atticus and Boo Radley), the behaviour of Victor, a character that initially appears to be benevolent. The theme of heroism is little evident in Frankenstein. The being that is also monstrous is one of the most heroic characters in the novel, for he is, until a certain point in his life, an ordinary hero. One can note such ordinary heroism in the help he constantly provides the cottagers: “(…) during the night, I (…) brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days” (Shelley 82). Although what he does is not extremely significant in the eyes of an outsider, the creature provides help in the best way he can, and his help does have a positive impact on the cottagers’ lifestyle. Besides collecting wood, the creature “cleared their path from the snow, and performed those offices that [he] had seen done by Felix.” (Shelley 85) He performs all of these activities without expecting to receive anything in return, and that...
Words: 1440 - Pages: 6
...In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is a well known lawyer, father to Scout and Jem Finch, and citizen in Maycomb County. His predominant characteristic is integrity. The definition of integrity is, “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty” (Dictionary.com). Atticus Finch shows this in the court and in his home. Most people only play by the rules and keep people’s wellbeing in mind when it can affect their own reputation or they are out in public. Atticus not only shows his integrity in town, but also in his own home and to his children as well. Scout and Jem have absorbed the genuineness of their father, through many daily lessons to life-threatening troubles. Mr. Finch is very unique...
Words: 759 - Pages: 4
...Truth versus reality is a common mistake in society. When applied in everyday life the two words are often placed improperly. When this mistake is compared to the trial held in To Kill A Mockingbird, the reader finds this to be an archetype of the common misunderstanding. In To Kill A Mockingbird, a trial is held to find the verdict of Mayella’s case, Mayella lacks family support and a social life, and Tom Robinson is found guilty as Mayella’s raper. The verdict is true to the jury, but in reality Tom Robinson is an innocent man. A trial is held to find the person who took advantage of Mayella and caused her injuries. Both sides of the story completely contradict each other, but both sound truthful. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s father, makes his confession which essentially states that he found Tom Robinson beating on Mayella when he arrived at his home. On the other hand Atticus, Toms defense attorney, states that Tom was requested to do a chore for her and ended up being kissed by her. Atticus also adds that when...
Words: 732 - Pages: 3
