Racism. The act of being prejudiced, discriminating, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a specific person or someone part of an ethnic group or race, typically one that is minority or marginalized. In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the story takes place during The Great Depression, which was a catastrophic event during the 1960’s in the United States. The protagonist, Scout; her brother, Jem; and a close friend, Dill, all must undergo situations in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, where there is lots of racism and discrimination. The book’s main storyline follows after Scout’s father, Atticus, of whom is defending a black person named Tom Robinson after being accused of raping a young, white, teenage girl. A big influencer to the plot of the …show more content…
The first way that Boo helps develop the story are by the well-known accusations proposed on him from earlier events before the story first took place. Boo was believed to have stabbed his father with scissors when he was younger, “As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activites” (Lee 13). As you can imagine, people would probably be afraid and act rudely to someone who is presumed to have done something like that. The terrible thing about it is that no one actually asked Boo for his side of the story. They just avoided the poor kid at the time. The reader learns from the story that Miss Maudie, their neighbor, as it happens to have known Boo when she was a kid in school; “‘No, child,’ she said, ‘that is a sad house. I remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did. Spoke as nicely as he knew how’” (Lee 61). From Miss Maudie’s personal experiences with Arthur, it sounds like he was a nice kid. No one gave him a chance, so all they thought was how horrible he was