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How Does Lee Present Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

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A novel set during the 1920s in Alabama, where prejudice was bounded into the air and Blood of the People is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel is written and shown from the perspective of a young girl, Scout. She lives around racist people, and the people around her always blame the black community for everything. One of the main incidents in the novel that depicts racism is when a scout sees a case of a black man accused of rape by a white man. That court case teaches a lot about scouting. She also grew up around prejudice, but she teaches her better lessons and how not to be racist like the others. Scout’s family, friends, and neighbors teach her Scout lessons that can make her a better person. Harper Lee uses society members …show more content…

Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, [...] yo’ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams, but it doesn’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’.Patel 1 ‘em—if you can’t act fit to eat at the table, you can just sit here and eat in the kitchen!” (Lee 27). Calpurniaq teaching scouts the lesson of respect is a great lesson because everyone should respect …show more content…

Scout can also learn that she should also respect others choices and not only theirs, which is very clear in Atticus since he says that Calpurnia will only leave when she wants, which is a form of respect. Scout is seen putting everything he learned into use when she takes Boo outside to sit and thinks that “Boo would feel more comfortable in the dark.” (Lee 312). Scout has learned to respect people since she is respecting how Boo would feel and think since he is very shy, so she is taking him to a darker area so he feels comfortable. Respect is one of the main lessons taught to scouts since, during this time period, the white people in Maycomb did not respect the others in society. As they were a lower class of whites, they wouldn’t respect them, and not many people would respect the colored people of Maycomb. This is the reason why respect is one of the most important lessons that scouts learn, because it is very useful during this time.Patel 2 The lesson of understanding others's situations is an important lesson for the development of Scout, which Atticus and Miss Maudie

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Scout learned to treat everybody equally. Atticus led a great example for Scout by taking Tom Robinsons case; He tried to win just as hard as he would have for a white man. Anytime Scout would ask questions or make comments about other people, Atticus would remind her not to judge others. For example, when Scout asks Atticus if he's a “nigger lover” he responds "I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody....

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In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Witch Hunt by Marc Aronson, prejudice is rampant. It has many forms, it can be easily seen, but yet it is rarely noticed. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus hopes that he “can get Jem and Scout through [the trial] without bitterness, and without catching Maycomb’s usual disease [racial prejudice],” similar to the Salem Witch Trials and that “Tituba’s appearance and heritage probably were not what influenced the girls [to accuse people of witchcraft and act strangely], the fact that she was Indian was enough.” Atticus explains that during the trial of Tom Robinson, racial prejudice is going to become very apparent to Jem and Scout. He doesn't want his children to go down a path of biased views of people

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It’s an awful feeling knowing that no matter how hard you work, you’ll never earn as much money as your white counterpart. Sadly, this has been the case for hundreds of years for African Americans living in the United States. To Kill a Mockingbird reveals the everyday struggles that African Americans endured during the 1930’s. Many of the events in the novel were based on the author, Harper Lee’s life. Just like Atticus, Lee’s father was also a lawyer.

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“It's time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us.”(Lee 331). This is a historical accurate on how people treated black people and people who were called minorities back then and believed that they were less than people and didn't care if they sounded rude or evil with what they said. This is further shown when Scout first learns of Nazi Germany and how they treated the Jews and then realized that the people who are racist and segregate themselves from normal black people were the equivalent of being a Nazi. Cecil Jacobs shares a news article in

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Growing up is fun until you realize how racist and cruel your society is. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Scout experiences many changes in Maycomb as she grows. She loses her innocence, learns about the people of Maycomb, learns influencing lessons from Atticus and the amount of prejudice and intolerance that’s in her community. Although she may have been innocent in the beginning, Scout began to understand society and the truths and lies of Maycomb as she grew.

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Scout learns from her dad Atticus that it is important to have courage in standing up when it's the right thing to do. Even when scared. One of the first lessons Scout learns about courage is when her father stands up for a colored man. In the Exposition of the story a lesson Scout learns about courage is when Atticus and uncle Jack are talking and Atticus explains to uncle Jack why he takes the Tom Robinson case: “ If I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in own, I couldn't represent this county in legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again” (Lee 100).

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I don’t think that Scout fully realized what people thought of the African-Americans. Atticus has taught her that all people are equal, so treat others the way you want to be

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Atticus continually explains to his children the importance of treating everyone equally, allowing his children to learn how to act appropriately towards others. After Scout asks Atticus the meaning of a N*****-lover, she asks Atticus if he is one and that is when he says “I certainly am. I do my best to try and love everybody… I’m hard put sometimes-baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name” (Lee 124). When Atticus said this to Scout and Jem it opened their eyes to how they should act towards other individuals. Seeing that Atticus is loving and accepting for all people, the positive qualities he possesses will get passed on to Jem and Scout making them a good influence for other people as well.

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Innocence is a time in one’s life of carefreeness and peace. In youth, children have yet to experience the harsh realities of life, and when they do, it is often hard to cope with. In her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee portrays Maycomb’s prejudiced ways through an unfair trial of an innocent man, and through the treatment of certain members of the community. The young narrator, Scout, and her older brother, Jem, experience growth and learn compassion when the trial exacerbates Maycomb’s intense intolerance. In this novel, Lee uses the characterization of the Finch children to demonstrate that innocent children who have been exposed to their community’s prejudice, often have trouble adjusting, but need a mentor figure to help them mature.

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Scout learned what ever woman in Maycomb country thought of her. She learned that they thought that Atticus wasn’t raising her right. She also learned what everyone in Maycomb country thought of her father, that he was a “nigger-lover” as Bob Ewell called Atticus. Scout has a temper that is hard for her to control but she has learned to control it over the events such as when she got into a fight with Walter Cunningham. When Atticus explained things like “ Scout, nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything - like snot-nose.

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1146 Words | 5 Pages

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells a story of racial prejudice during the Depression and how it is combated. The main development in the novel is that a Atticus, the father of Scout and Jem, has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman named Mayella. Many people in the town of Maycomb, particularly people involved with the case of Tom, have a negative attitude towards African Americans. Prejudice was a terrible issue in the South during the Depression, but Atticus Finch shows that racial injustice can be combated in two main ways, each having different levels of effectiveness.

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1371 Words | 6 Pages

With her new understanding that she should treat everyone equally, she knew that Jem was wrong about them being better than the Cunninghams, and that there isn’t four kinds of ‘folks’ in the Maycomb like Jem says, there’s just one, where everyone should equal ,but that’s not the case in Maycomb. This lesson was important for Scout to learn because it has allowed her to be fair and reasonable. Unlike Scout, most of the people in Maycomb have not learned this lesson. One example of this is when a black man named Tom Robinson was put on trial for being accused of raping a white girl name Mayella Ewell. “Judge Taylor was polling the jury: ‘Guilty…guilty…guilty..guilty…’I peaked at Jem:

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In the first part of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the story is seen through the eyes of Scout, a young girl in Maycomb, Alabama learning from her surroundings; such as the gossip-full neighborhood she lives in, the peculiar family across the street, the Radleys, and Scout’s elders, Miss Maudie, a neighbor, and her father, Atticus. Scout learns differently from all of these people. Her neighbors share the rumors of Maycomb, whereas Miss Maudie and Atticus are trying to teach her valuable life lessons, such as respect and humility. What the reader is learning throughout the text is that although one’s ignorance to the truth about others and reception of rumors may influence one’s morals, the wisdom of elders has a greater impact.

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Harper Lee incorporates many lessons throughout the novel and they are really positive and most of them focus on treating people equally and saying nice things and putting yourself in another person's shoes. Scout is coming home from school and she says the N- word and the attic use tells her “Don't say N-word scout” (99). This is showing that people in the south just didn't look at black people and cared about them because if they did their dad would have just sat back and would have let them use that word knowing that it is a racial

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Scout herself learns from Atticus, her father, that “[y]ou never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.” (Lee 39) Throughout the novel, Scouts truly learns about racism, how it affects everyone, and how unfair it was toward the African community. We still have much to learn because there is very much still racism in today’s society. By using books like To

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