In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses symbolism, racism, and gender-roles to describe life back in the 1930s.
Harper Lee uses symbolism to describe life back in the 1930s. One example of this would be a camellia bush. Scout remembers watching Jem when “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves.”(Lee, 118) The camellia bush is symbolic because, in order to kill something, people have to kill the roots first. Thankfully, Jem did not cut the roots because Mrs. Dubose, probably, would have been mad, if he did. Another example is the roly-poly. Scout was putting her book on the floor beside her cot, “... When you touch them, they roll themselves into a tight gray ball … He rolled up. Then, feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled.”(Lee, 272) Scout found roly-poly in the house and tried to smash the tiny varmint when Jem told her not to because it never did anything to hurt Scout. This refers back to when Atticus told the children it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they are innocent
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One black’s life was cruelly taken from him when he was put on trial for something he did not do. The reason, he was held guilty was because back then “when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s word, the white man always wins.”(Lee, 251-252) The white man’s word usually, got the jury to hold the black man guilty, whether the black man did it or not. After the trial, Atticus told Jem “If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man.”(Lee, 251) What Atticus means by this is that some children do not get the ‘Maycomb’s disease’, like the other children may. Everything after the trial shows that Jem is “color blind” and he sees all people the same, no matter what color their skin