Examples Of Bias In To Kill A Mockingbird

Essential Question: How are prejudice and bias created? How are they overcome? Merriam Webster defines prejudice as an unfair feeling of dislike for a person or group because of race, sex, or religion. Bias, bias is defined as a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others that usually results in treating some people unfairly. We are surrounded by these things in life, the first day of school teachers are prejudice of students by the way they look or the way they act, students are prejudice of other students for how they dress or who they are friends with, prejudice and bias are everywhere. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird there is a lot of prejudice and bias, we see how they are created and how they are overcome.

Tom is seen by the public as a monster, someone who raped and beat Mayella Ewell. The following quote from Darren Felty’s essay about prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird proves a good point about how bias people are in Maycomb and how it affects Scout. “Because of Atticus's involvement with Tom Robinson, for the first time the children must face the social rejection caused by racial bias. They become victims of exclusion and insult, which they would never have expected.” The quote is important because it shows that just because Atticus was involved with Tom Robinson Scout is now being affected by it just because of the bias against him in Maycomb. No matter what people are bias towards white people in the situation, people want to think that a white man was incapable of doing such a horrid act, it is much for comfortable for the people of Maycomb to think in their heads that Tom

The following quote shows the prejudice that Jem had for Boo before meeting him “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.” (1.65) The quote shows how disgusting of a creature Jem viewed Boo as without even seeing or knowing him, this is a serious case of prejudice and there is not doubt about it, but is it possible this can be overcome? Of course it is and we see throughout the book Scout and Jem start to get a better understanding of Boo and what he’s is really like, one quote that sticks out to me is the quote “Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside." (23.117) this is said by Jem, and we can tell that he is slowly starting to not only have sympathy for Boo and his situation of not communicating with the community for a long period of time but Jem is also starting to understand why people view Boo in the terrible way that