Prejudice is an opinion formed without knowing the facts, by ignoring them. She uses people like the Cunninghams, Ewells, Aunt Alexandra and Tom Robinson to develop her argument. The first part is about when it is the first day of school and the first grade has a new teacher Miss Caroline. Another section is when Aunt Alexandra wants to get rid of Calpurnia for some things she has done and when Tom Robinson is put on trial for an incident that did not happen the way Bob Ewell portrayed it. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee argues that prejudice can affect people's decisions.
One event that shows that prejudice can affect people's decisions, is when Miss Caroline, the school teacher tried to give a quarter to Walter Cunningham
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“Alexandra, Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn’t have got along without her all these years. She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll simply have to accept things the way they are” (Lee 182). This shows that prejudice can affect people's decisions because if Calpurnia was white and took the kids to a white church, Aunt Alexandra would not have cared, but they went to a black church and Alexandra thought that was bad for the kids. Another place that supports this is when the jury claims that Tom Robinson is guilty of raping and beating Mayella Ewell. “The foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who handed it to the judge. . . I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: “Guilty. . . guilty. . . guilty. . . guilty. . .”(Lee 282). In this scene, prejudice can affect people's decisions is shown because when the jury convicted Tom of the crime and the evidence is in Toms favor of winning, but because he is a colored man the jury still convicted him of the crime. As we can see prejudice can have a big effect on people in a lot of different