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Examples Of Historical Influences In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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Historical Influences in To Kill a Mockingbird

Do you ever wonder what happened during 1930’s; well the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” takes place during the great depression. Harper Lee used Nonfiction events that happened in real life and used them to make her book. There are connections in the book of the Jim Crow Laws, Mob Mentality, and the Scottsboro Trials. The first historical connection that Harper Lee used is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that made African Americans second-class citizens. The Jim Crow laws portrayed African Americans as animals and nothing like humans (V.). Black men and women were beaten, and even killed for no reason (pilgrim). Jim Crow laws were also used in the novel to kill a mockingbird. Harper Lee matches several ideas from the Jim Crow laws like how she made Tom Robinson be treated like an animal. The Jim Crow Laws were a way of life back then even in the novel. The Jim Crow laws were used to help make the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”. …show more content…

Herd mentality means “ is often used to something that involves more conscious thought than herd behavior” (Smith). Herd behavior is known as someone doing what other people around are doing or what they think is right. Mob mentality was used in the novel. Mob mentality “is used to refer to unique behavioral characteristics that emerge when people are in large groups. Mob mentality is large groups of people that do something, but they don’t know why they are doing it. Mob mentality is can turn violent and dangerous quickly, even some of the people in the mob don’t know why their doing it; they just follow what other people around them are

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TKM Theme Essay Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during the Great Depression in the small town of Maycomb in Alabama. Scout and Jem live in what they think is a good community. From what they know, everyone fits into the community except Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbor. They think this until the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American that is accused a raping a white women, takes place. The kids see something they have never noticed about their community before.

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Jim Crow Laws provided “a systematic legal basis for segregating and discriminating against African-Americans” (“Jim Crow Laws”). These laws withheld blacks from getting the same education, pay, and jobs as whites, keeping blacks from growing in society. The name Jim Crow came from “the song Jump Jim Crow which was performed by a white man, Thomas Rice, in minstrel shows during the 1830s and 1840s” (“Jim Crow Laws”). This shows how even before Jim Crow Laws were in place discrimination was very strong and was accepted in society. Knowing Jim Crow Laws came from a racist play foreshadowed how blacks would be treated through Jim Crow Laws.

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While the Jim Crow laws aren’t directly mentioned in the book, the prejudice caused by these laws are very present, and this prejudice is shown in throughout

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Society shaped Harper Lee to write To Kill a Mockingbird because she grew up in an extremely racist time period. To illustrate this, on biography.com¹, it reads “Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama.” In other words, Lee was born in the heart of the south in 1926, a time before equality was widespread. The evidence highlights that Lee grew up in a very racist period in the south, including segregation and the famous Scottsboro Trials. Another example is on page 331, Scout says “Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was - she was goin’ down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her - she was talking to Miss Stephanie Crawford.

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The time period of the 1930s included The Great Depression, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Coalition, leaving hardships and crime in their wake. Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird that was published on July 11, 1960, gives the readers an insight of what it was like for her growing up in a small southern town in the 1930s. The events she witnessed growing up as a lawyer’s daughter during this time had significant influence for the best-selling novel To Kill a Mockingbird that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and became an Academy Award winning film in 1962. To Kill a Mockingbird has a strong theme of believing the good in everyone, no matter the circumstances. Harper Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer.

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Natural rights were violated, and in some cases, taken away, due to the fact that a good amount of white people wanted to feel superior. To Kill a Mockingbird represents the larger society of the American South during this time period by connecting fictional

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During the 1930’s, racial tension and discrimination had been widespread throughout the South. In the year before, the stock market had crashed, causing the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the Dust Bowl was also going on, affecting farmers and workers in the mid-east. Although life was already hard for many, Jim Crow Laws were created. They were laws written to segregate Blacks and Whites.

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“To Kill A Mockingbird,” a novel by Harper Lee novel tells the story of a 6-year-old named Scout, who’s living in the 19th century during a time of normalized racial discrimination. Harper Lee uses conflict of the Tom Robinson’s case and characterization of Tom Robinson, in order to represent and point out the idea of discrimination against people of color, can lead to social racial oppression in court in American society. A characterization that’s important is Tom Robinson ( a black man). He’s portrayed as a generous man; “‘Were you paid for your services? “‘Not after she offered me a nickel the first time.

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The book gives a wonderful definition of the Jim Crow Laws when tt states that the Jim Crow Laws had, “the effect of which was to reduce the civil rights of blacks in the south” (Treanor pg.15). The Jim Crow Laws were meant to strip away the rights of the African

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Mobs also show the flaws in human nature in society by being an example of people without consequences. In the article “Brawls break out over Black Friday deals” by the New York Post (NYP), people desperate to simply save a few dollars for their gifts ended up “punching and slapping each other silly” (NYP par. 2). These people have this opportunity of doing whatever they want without repercussions, then their inner desires for violence arise that are normally suppressed by consequences. This relates (and thus proves Goldings point) to the boys in Lord of the Flies where no adults to punish them leads to the boys hunting, hurting, and even

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Risk-taking is someone doing a task and not knowing what will happen after, whether it ends in a good or bad way. People can take risks for many different reasons, the satisfaction of themselves, to help somebody else, etc. When people take risks there is no way to know what the result is going to be, I think that’s why a lot of people are willing to take risks, the majority of people believe that the result will be profitable to them. In Alan Gratz’s book ‘Refugee’ Josef, a young Jewish boy lives through his life as a refugee with his family as they try to escape to Cuba while Nazis try to confiscate Germany. In ‘When the Waters Rise’ by Alex Shultz, 4 teenage boys help + rescue a world full of people after a devastating hurricane hits Houston,

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In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there are many similarities between the narrator, Scout, and the author, Harper Lee. For instance, both grew up in the time of the great depression with little money to do extra things; therefore, they relied on their imaginations to entertain them for hours (Haggerty) . Comparatively, both were tomboys in their youths and grew up in small towns where girls were expected to wear dresses and act like a lady. Also, both Harper Lee and Scout both grew up with their fathers being lawyers for their town and would often hear of cases that they worked on (“Harper Lee”) . Similarly, when writing her book a “mad dog warning” was released, no doubt giving the idea for the episode of the mad dog Tim Robinson.

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Mob mentality occurs in The Lord of the Flies and in To Kill a Mockingbird. A setting with a dictator leadership and deindividuation in the people, is when mob mentality is more likely to occur. Mob mentality in The Lord of the Flies and in To Kill a Mockingbird occurs when people join a group or a mob, they lose their identity and follow the group's actions instead of their own. Mob mentality occurs in many different situations. Mob mentality occurs when people

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“To Kill a Mockingbird” written by Harper Lee, is set in the 1930s when racial discrimination was unchecked and rampant in North America. The racial bias had creeped into the American Justice system and had started to play a dominant role in deciding whether an accused was guilty or innocent. The Great depression of the 1930s had a huge impact on the african american population of the United States of America as majority of them employed as sharecroppers, mine workers or as minimal wage jobs. Due to the economic depression, lost their jobs and as a result lost their livelihoods.

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Although the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, took place in the 1930s, it ties closely into the Civil Rights Movement. This novel displayed the obvious superiority whites had over blacks. It took place during a time when colored people faced discrimination, prejudice, and racism. When the book was published in the 1960s, it made whites furious, resulting in a lot of controversy. Harper Lee had a goal when writing, she wanted to show the relation between actual events that happened during the civil rights and incorporate it into her own novel to show how cruel colored people were treated, specifically when whites accused blacks of doing sinful acts.

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