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Comparing The Division In Human Society In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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‘‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’’ (Martin Luther King Jr.) To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee that teaches us about racism and the division in human society through the eyes of a young girl called Scout. The novel teaches us about human inequality and the division within human society by showing us how African Americans were treated in the courtrooms and treated as a human.
In the story, African Americans are treated unfairly. Most of America back then was racist but this is not an excuse and it is still inequality. Tom is a black man accused of rape in a racist town, he lost the case before it even started. Everybody was racist back then and this is proven when Atticus says ‘‘In our courts when …show more content…

The novel shows us the division in human society in many ways. One of the examples is the schooling system and all the different kinds of children there. The Ewell family is a very poor farming family, so they only send their kids to school on the first and last days of school. This is so the kids can stay home and work on the farm instead of sitting in school. There are a lot of different people in this world that have a lot of different situations. So you never really understand a person until you hear their story. Or as Atticus puts it ‘‘you never really understand a person until you climb into their skin and walk around in it.’’(Lee 39) This emphasizes that you can never really know what someone has been through. It also shows that there is a division in human society by showing what it was like to be poor back then and also what it is like to be black. To sum up, To Kill a Mockingbird teaches us how division in human society is a problem and should be fixed. The novel does so by giving us different examples of lifestyles and how each level of society is treated and …show more content…

African Americans at this time were not treated fairly and it is shown throughout the entire story. A good example of this is Tom Robinson, he is falsely accused of rape and sent to jail. While in jail he is shot 17 times and killed. Even if you are caught hanging around a black person they discriminate against you. Atticus states “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man.’’ This shows that even getting caught with a black person will make you a disgrace. The book teaches us that inequality or racism is bad; they do this with Scouts and Atticus. They both fight for equality and try to treat everyone

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A critical event in the book is when Atticus accepts to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell; however, he is disfavored against by the town due to his race. In the book, Atticus says, “...The only thing we’ve got is a black man’s word against the Ewells’. The evidence boils down to you did--I-didn’t. The jury couldn’t possibly be expected to take Tom Robinson’s word against the Ewells’...” (Lee 117).

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Even after the trial and Tom is found guilty, Atticus was still getting treated poorly by some people. Bob Ewell sees Atticus walking down the street and walks up to him and starts cursing him out. After he was done cursing him out, he spat in his face, Atticus just wiped his face and walked off. This is another example of racism affecting people because if Tom was white, Atticus deciding to defend him would have been normal No one would have treated Atticus differently like

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The book “To Kill A Mockingbird” was written by Harper lee. Throughout the book Lee uses a story to get a deeper meaning out to her audience and the world. During the where the story was set there were inequality issues and very prejudice opinions. Intertwined in the book she addresses the controversial topics like race and different forms of prejudice. There were several different forms of prejudice in this book.

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After Tom, an innocent black man that was convicted of rape, tried, but failed, to escape from the county jail, Scout reflects, “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.” (Lee, FIND PAGE ##). Scout realizes that the justice system is racist against black people and how he was going to be convicted even though he was innocent. Scout loses her innocence because she finally sees that life is unfair for some people and that prejudice is more common than she thought.

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Through the type of language Lee writes him using, he is able to expose the picture of racial injustice. As Atticus is talking to his daughter, Scout, Atticus says “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (30), explaining that she doesn’t know what people are going through. Atticus could’ve said it in a different way, but he said "into his skin” (30) because there is racial injustice in the book. This slight change of words that Lee imported into Atticus’ dialogue is also talking about how different ethnicities face different problems.

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