Hospitality In To Kill A Mockingbird

The Small Moments of Life

Why does community seem to come together in times of need? Some people think of community as simply the neighborhood they live in, but in reality it is how people show kindness and hospitality to one another. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, present a generous amount of hospitality through the small community of Maycomb. The people that make up the populace show southern hospitality through modest acts of kindness and polite gestures such as merely saying their pleases and thank yous. Gracious hospitality and openness towards strangers is a hallmark of the South as shown in To Kill a Mockingbird. Southern hospitality appears throughout the book at various times such as when Aunt Alexandra hosts a tea party during

To begin with, southern hospitality is a key part of Aunt Alexandra’s characteristics. She believes that people, especially females, should have polite manners towards every one of the same equality of themselves. If a person is of lower status, then they are not to be associated with by the higher class people. Aunt Alexandra deems it wise to cast her cares away whilst in the midst of a social gathering as she shows in the following passage, “I thought Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from her face she was not…Aunt Alexandra rose and smoothed the various whalebone ridges along her hips…She patted her hair and said, ‘Do I show it?’…And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the dining room, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies” (317). In spite of tragic news recently received Aunt Alexandra casts her cares away and enters the room full of sweet tea and lighthearted laughter. Little do her friends know that terrible news had just come. Aunt Alexandra is a picture of southern hospitality at its

The idea of southern hospitality permeates the entire culture. People tend to think only those of higher class show southern hospitality, but those of lower status economically can demonstrate hospitality equally as well. In the book the following passage shows this clearly: “The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family… Calpurnia said ‘This was all ‘round the back steps when I got here this morning. They-they aren’t oversteppin’ themselves are they?’” (286). Through this simple act of kindness, it demonstrates how this black community wanted to thank Atticus for all he had done for their friend. Atticus tells Calpurnia for this to never happen again because he knows that times are rough, but that he is very grateful for what they had done for him and his family. True southern hospitality cut across class lines and demonstrates the generosity and heart felt concern of the people for