Social Coexistence In Maycomb

To Kill a Mockingbird takes plays in a fictional town called Maycomb in Alabama and is the county seat of Maycomb County. The main character Scott grows up in a time of “vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself” (Lee 6). The Great Depression hit the American South compared to the North harder, owed to its dependency on the cotton prizes and agriculture. Even before the stock-market crash 1929, the South was the poorest region in the United States. The narrator describes the leisureliness of the town, as “people moved slowly then (.…) There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with” (Lee 6).

Especially poorer whites feared that, following Claudia Johnson argumentation, the “breakdown of the class and, especially racial boundaries” (Threatening Boundaries 4) would deteriorate their standard of living, which is the case in Maycomb’s society as especially the family of the victim is considered “white trash” (Lee 33).

3.1.1 Social Coexistence in Maycomb

Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird is segregate in its diverse class stratification and reflects the social, economic and political atmosphere in the United States at that time. The wealth belongs to a small white upper class, the rest is divided into different classes and increments, but poor whites feel they are in competition with blacks for a decent living and the whites-only advantage was their skin color. Generally, there is the idea that segregation results in discrimination, but Deborah Kenn argues that “indeed, discrimination is one of the most powerful enforces for segregation” (2). This discrimination starts with the low income of blacks, followed by housing prizes and segregated education. In Maycomb there is a small place almost outside the town where the cabins of