Examples Of Classism In To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is an award winning novel that was first published in 1960. The book takes place in a small town in Alabama called Maycomb during the 1930s, and it centers around a young girl named Scout, who doesn’t follow the gender expectations in her town of being a “lady”. She lives with her father Atticus, who is a lawyer, and her older brother Jem. In the book, Scout and Jem are fascinated by the scary house on the corner of their block that is occupied by the mysterious Boo Radley. Initially, they are obsessed with him, but as they grow up, they realize that there are more important things to worry about like the fact that a black man is being put on trial for something he didn’t even do. In today’s society, many

Classism is something that is a part of society, however, it is not brought to as much attention as it should be. The book takes place during the 1930s, which was also the time of the Great Depression. Because of the Great Depression, there weren’t a lot of rich people in Maycomb, but there were people who had more money than others. Because the Great Depression left many people poor, many of them were jealous of the wealthier people. The wealthier people, however, didn’t like the poor people because they saw them as inferior, dirty, and helpless. The Finch’s were people who were considered wealthier than the rest of the town , and at first, Scout didn’t know the difference between everyone in Maycomb. She soon realizes that “There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes”(Lee 226). Scout however, sees everyone somewhat the same and still interacts with the “other” people. After asking her Aunt Alexandra to play with Walter Cunningham, her aunt doesn’t let her “Because-he-is-trash, that's why you can't play with him”(Lee 225). Scout soon realizes that her town isn’t as nice as it seems, and that in Maycomb County “The thing about it is, our kind of folks don’t like the Cunninghams, the

It is a very big problem in our world that has changed drastically over time. The discrimination of black people began in the 17th century, when Africans were taken from their homes and brought to different countries so that they could be slaves to the European colonists. They were treated poorly, brutally beaten, and forced to do labor intensive work by their white masters. In America, slavery was very common in the south, however in the north there was not nearly as much so slaves often tried escaping to the north. By the 1930s, slavery was no longer a common thing, and instead they had segregation. This was the action of separating the black people from the white people. White and black people used different water fountains and sat on different sides of the bus, they went to different schools, restaurants, bathrooms, churches, and more. It wasn’t common for a white person to be in a African American church, and that is why it was shocking to everyone when Calpernia showed up to church with Jem and Scout and why Lula said "You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal”(Lee 119)? Because slavery was more common in the south, racism was also more common in the south. “There's something in our world that makes men lose