The central idea that develops throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is racism because throughout the book many people had prejudice, scared, and peer pressured into being racist towards the black people who lived in Maycomb. To Kill a Mockingbird showed what living with racism back then was like and it also showed the reader that many people had prejudice.
Prejudice is shown all throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and is one of the main themes that develops throughout the book. Prejudice is when someone judge others by how they look before getting to know the person personally. For example, in the novel it states, “People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows.” (pg.10) This tells the reader that Scout who is the main character is being told false information about a black man named Mr. Radley about how he is creepy. Mr. Radley was being judged before anyone got to know who he was. Most of the people in Maycomb thought he was creepy because he would never come out of his house, but he did that because he didn’t want to be criticized by the other town folk in Maycomb. Another example of people being prejudice in the novel is when Tom Robinson a black man was accused for
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For example, a reason why Mr. Radley and his family never left their house was because they lived with fear, they isolated themselves from the outside world to keep themselves safe from the people that would hurt them just because they have a different skin color than everyone else. Also, most white people in Maycomb that don’t dislike the black people living there still stay away from them because then other people will start to judge them and hurt them. To finalize, a lot of people of both races live in fear and the number one thing that causes this fear is peer