...award winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, deals with the many issues in society through the mind of a fictional character from the 1930s. To clearly point out the various issues that exist in society, Harper Lee wrote the novel from the perspective of an innocent child. A child with little to no understanding of any of the social issues, even though Maycomb constantly suffers from them. One of the main societal issues that Harper Lee focuses on is the issue of social classes. Although Harper Lee did not decide to put the main focus on the issue of class, it is still a relevant a problem that continually shows up throughout the course of the novel. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in a fictional town, by the name of Maycomb, during the Great Depression. Due...
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...In the article “A Different Read on ‘Mockingbird’” by Scott Martelle, the outdated teaching method and innacurate point of view in To Kill A Mockingbird, are give deep consideration. questioned. First, there are many other more accurate (Lee, grew up during this time, so it is still accurate, but maybe a bit bais) books that teach about the hardships of African Americans in the 1930’s. Secondly, the book is told from a very limited point of view. Some people argue that the lessons of To Kill A Mockingbird are timeless, and are still valuable. While it is true that the book states some very important key points about the hardships of African Americans in the 1930’s, it is stated from a very biased point of view. There are many other books...
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...Racism, Social Class, and Gender Issues: A Look Into 1930s Maycomb, Alabama. The film, To Kill A Mockingbird directed by Robert Mulligan, portrays a message of racism, social class, and gender issues faced by southern towns post Civil War era. The 1962 film adaptation of the classic book, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee was masterfully captured being placed on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest American movies of all time and taking home many countless awards. The black and white portrayal from text to film is exquisitely captured turning pages to picture while reveling a heartbreaking reality. Through camera, lighting, and sound Robert Mulligan creates a mood to communicate the vision of Harper Lee. The film takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. Robert Mulligan illustrates the story of the lives of Scout and Jem, children growing up in this small town with their friend Dill who stays for the summer. The youngsters become infatuated with getting a glimpse of Boo Radley the unseen hermit of a neighbor. This summer also entails issues facing, their attorney father, Atticus Finch. Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, an African American man falsely accused of raping a white woman from town, Mayella Ewell. The children catch wind of the trial and for the first time witness evil realities of the world. Jem and Scout, Atticus’s children become the targets of Bob Ewell, the father of Mayella Ewell. Bob Ewell tries to kill them one Halloween...
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...Student Name: Lecturer’s Name: Date: Southern Contemporary Fiction and the Issue of Race Thesis: Southern contemporary fiction contained a lot of truths about the race relations between Black and White Americans in the twentieth century. Introduction Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a significant shift in the focus of southern literature, both fiction and nonfiction. In the nineteenth century, most Southern fiction works were mainly on the Civil War and the Reconstruction. However, as that generation died away, the new crop of authors who had never experienced the civil war or the Reconstruction became more objective in their writings about the South. Contemporary Southern writers such as Harper Lee, Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner wrote fiction, but the stories written had a lot of truth about the way communities in the American South lived like in the twentieth century. As a result, one cannot fail but notice that there is one recurring issue in almost every novel in contemporary Southern fiction; the issue of race. (Sundquist 1994) Authors usually write stories which are a reflection of the attitudes and the norms of their time and contemporary Southern fiction reflects this. The southern part of the United States has always had a large percentage of people of African descent living there. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two states actually had an African-American majority; South Carolina and Mississippi...
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...you consider things from his point of view until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.’ (3: 85-87) To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAMB) written by Harper Lee focuses on the inequality of race throughout America in the early 1900’s. The building roman novel published in 1960 utilises literacy techniques including symbolism, first person and characterisation in order to explore key themes such as innocence, social inequality and gender stereotyping. The novel promotes an insightful, entertaining and morally educating perspective for all readers. Literacy techniques are a critical part of the storytelling. Symbolism is used in order to enhance the story; it expresses a deeper meaning towards...
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...“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...
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...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...
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...relevant 40 years after being published. As well good literature makes you think and feel strongly about the themes of the work. Good literature can be read over and over again each time receiving a new component which was not realized before. Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, is a novel that takes on the complex issues of racism within a community and the justice system. In this novel a white man, Atticus Finch, takes on the case of a black man, Tom Robinson, who has allegedly raped a white teenager, Mayella. In the setting of Maycomb, a city in a southern American state in the 1930s, it is considered appalling that Atticus Finch would be defending Robinson. In the time that this book was published it was only 12 years earlier that Order 9981 was made which stated the equal rights and treatment of all races and religions, and only five years earlier that Rosa Parks stood up on the bus for her rights. That being said this book in its time would have been social criticism, and still applies to today world. Looking at cases like Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin there is a direct connection that can be made to the case of Tom Robinson. Infact many protestors have used various quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird in their protests including a conversation between Scout and Atticus when Robinson is convicted as guilty “How could they do it, how could they?" "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it—seems...
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...I believe America will never achieve true racial and social equality because racism is a very big problem in our world and it always has been. It may be getting a little better as the years go by but there is still a big issue with it. It will probably always be an issue in this world that we live in. Things have definitely gotten easier for colored people than in the past, however, white people still have it way better. Colored people are contradistinguished compared to white people. Karen Kellaher wrote ¨African-Americans were freed from slavery in 1865. But they were still not treated fairly in many parts of our country. Many people would not hire blacks for jobs or sell them homes. Blacks could not use many public buildings or even ride...
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...The film, To Kill A Mockingbird directed by Robert Mulligan, portrays a message of racism, social class, and gender issues faced by southern towns post Civil War era. The 1962 film adaptation of the classic book, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee was masterfully captured being placed on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest American movies of all time and taking home many countless awards. The black and white portrayal from text to film is exquisitely captured turning pages to picture while reveling a heartbreaking reality. Through camera, lighting, and sound Robert Mulligan creates a mood to communicate the vision of Harper Lee. The film takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. Robert Mulligan illustrates the story of the lives of Scout and Jem, children growing up in this small town with their friend Dill who stays for the summer. The youngsters become infatuated with getting a glimpse of Boo Radley the unseen hermit of a neighbor. This summer also entails issues facing, their attorney father, Atticus Finch. Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, an African American man falsely accused of raping a white woman from town, Mayella Ewell. The children catch wind of the trial and for the first time witness evil realities of the world. Jem and Scout, Atticus’s children become the targets of Bob Ewell, the father of Mayella Ewell. Bob Ewell tries to kill them one Halloween night on their way home from school, when the elusive Boo Radley shows up and saves...
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...Imagine being back in the Great Depression and being accused of something that did not happen and being found guilty. This is what happened to Tom Robinson in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, Harper Lee used real life stories as a guide to help her write her novel correctly and accurately. The novel is tied to a few stories such as, Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the issues of racism in that time period. One of the first connections to America’s history of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. To begin, Jim Crow was a racist system that promoted inequality between the races. A bountiful number of people believed the laws were necessary to keep black people in their place. In addition, they used the Jim Crow...
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...To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is a critically acclaimed novel narrated by Scout FInch, following an important three years in her life. This novel became an instant best seller, an Academy Award-winning film, and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. This book in some states are part of the English curriculum to be taught in high schools, while in other states it is banned from school libraries. This book arises much controversy because it is based around white supremacy in the South, and how African Americans were harshly treated. It reveals the ugly truth on how society handled cases in the court and the biased verdicts as the result. It also reveals the existence of good and evil in a small town, and how some adults...
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...The American Dream, the archetypal notion that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative, is an ideal that most people strive to achieve. Unfortunately, in the past and in modern day, the population that surrounds us has been propelled by conceptions such as racism and gender roles which avert us from obtaining our visions. Classic works of literature including To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and A Raisin in the Sun accurately display a lack of equality and fair treatment in the sharing of wealth and opportunities by incorporating racism and gender roles into the lives if the characters in the novels. The authors of To Kill a Mockingbird,...
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...The Man in the Moon (1991) Review/Film; A New Boy In Town Captures Her Heart Everything about "The Man in the Moon," Robert Mulligan's effortlessly old-fashioned family drama set in a small Southern town, has a rosy glow. It's a reminder that Mr. Mulligan, a seasoned film maker whose credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Summer of '42" and "The Other," can direct with real tenderness and without fake emotion. His latest film unfolds gently and gracefully, in a climate where the warmth isn't merely a matter of weather. Until its final reel, when it strains badly to accommodate an almost biblical stroke of retribution, "The Man in the Moon" is a small, fond film that achieves a kind of quiet perfection. The story concerns two sisters, and Mr. Mulligan can find something evocative even in the way the elder braids the younger one's hair. The latter, 14-year-old Dani (Reese Witherspoon), is just on the verge of real beauty, while the slightly older Maureen (Emily Warfield) has already gotten there. The girls' family, which is beautifully evoked, exists at all different stages of development, from their toddler sister to their pregnant mother (Tess Harper) and the father (Sam Waterston) who is wary of his daughters' prospective suitors. In his or her own way, each member of this family longs for a boy. When one arrives, in the form of a handsome teen-age neighbor named Court (Jason London), he affects the girls' family in powerful ways. The coltish Dani becomes smitten with...
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...and Jem from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsb by Scott Fitzgerald. Each of these characters encounters different processes of coming of age. When these characters process of maturation and coming of age are compared, the most relevant coming of age best exhibited by Holden from The Catcher in the Rye, following with Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Gatsby from The Great Gatsby; however, differences in coming of age are apparent in the different time periods of each novel setting, practicality, and present social issues. Holden Caulfield, the main character in The Catcher in the...
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