How Does Harper Lee Use Conflict In To Kill A Mockingbird

“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” (Lee 370). To Kill a Mockingbird is a historical novel by Harper Lee that centers around a young Alabama woman during the 1930’s when there was discrimination between whites and blacks. In the book, Lee expresses that there will always be hierarchy between people and reveals the unjusticeness of society through conflict and characterization. For one thing, through conflict, Harper Lee shows the discrimination between blacks and whites and how whites see themselves superior to blacks. To the town of Maycomb, it was “typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw” (Lee 322). This was shown when Tom Robinson had tried to escape from jail, but ended up getting killed instead. For Maycomb (a small town in Alabama) to express no care for when a black person had

An example of this would be at the beginning of the book where Scout (the protagonist) had questioned Walter Cunningham, making him feel bad. After making him feel bad and claiming that “he’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup” (Lee 32), Calpurnia (the family cook) told her that even though “yo’ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’ ‘em” (Lee 33). Like any other place in the world, Maycomb had social classes. Within the social classes, the higher class typically looks down on the lower class. Because the Finches were in a higher class than the Cunninghams, Scout made fun of her Cunningham classmate. Fortunately, as Scout matured through the book, so did her viewpoint on the lower class. It showed when her aunt, Aunt Alexandra, had told her that Walter Cunningham was not allowed to play with Scout because he was trash; she ended up being upset about not being allowed to play with the