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How To Kill A Mockingbird Fit Into Society

1147 Words5 Pages

How would you feel if the way you chose to live your life was constantly being analyzed by society? Harper Lee is best known for her best-selling book To Kill A Mockingbird. She bases the book off of a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell. She got the inspiration for the novel when a similar trial, The Scottsboro Trial, broke out in Alabama in 1931. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Tom is falsely proved guilty and later shot while in jail. Maycomb County, the county jail that Tom was placed in, was not happy when they heard that one of their own white citizens, Atticus Finch, was representing a black man in court. Atticus Finch is the man that took on this trial knowing what would come of it. His children, Jem …show more content…

The Ewells don’t fit into society because they don’t have the luxuries that other Maycomb citizens do. “Atticus says the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection” (Lee 40). Scout recalls the time that her father was talking about the Ewell family and how they are poor, but yet they don’t do anything to try and fix that. Nobody in the county associates themselves with the Ewells because they don’t live or act the way that others do. “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump” (227). The family is not wealthy enough to afford to live in a normal home, so they have to live in an old, rustic cabin. “In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr.Bob Ewell was permitted to hunt and trap out of season” (41). The Ewells aren’t the only family to be looked at as outcasts in Maycomb society. It seems that the Radley family and them share the common interest of not wanting to conform to society’s

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793 Words | 4 Pages

The verdict of the Tom Robinson case helps shine the light on the morality of the Maycomb community members. The Ewell family are seated on the lowest level of the society statues pyramid and rightly so. Bob Ewell punishes Mayella, his daughter, in a violent manner and blames Tom Robinson for raping her; this is an unethical and dirty accusation. “We don’t know, but there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left. We do know in part what Mr. Ewell did:”(Lee 272).

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176 Words | 1 Pages

Readers have experienced the Ewells shoddy role in the society. Furthermore, the Ewells were the disgrace of Maycomb for 3 generations. Bob Ewell was an illiterate, following his inherited traditions by abandoning attendance to school for his children. Although, his

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915 Words | 4 Pages

Like most places, Maycomb County, Alabama was full of hardworking people of integrity, as well as dishonest, indolent citizens. Atticus, a distinguished lawyer, raised his two kids, Scout and Jem, to be disciplined youth, practicing honest morals. Everyone in Maycomb admired Atticus for his respectable character, just as they all abhorred the Ewell family, for their cheating and lying ways. However, Atticus’ prominent role in town was suddenly challenged when he was chosen to defend in court Tom Robinson, a black man whom Mayella Ewell accused him of taking advantage of her. Eyes that once looked up to Atticus with deep admiration, now glared at him in disgust.

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864 Words | 4 Pages

They are also responsible for not protecting Tom Robinson from being wrongly accused of something he did not do. Bob Ewell is the main antagonist in the novel, he is an abusive racist and drunk. The Ewells are the trashiest people in the town of Maycomb county but not because of where they live. In the novel, it states, “Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” (Lee 33) They are the source of all the town’s problems, especially Bob Ewell. The Ewells are a family that has never been able to gain respect from the rest of Maycomb.

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100 Words | 1 Pages

Olmec heads The Olmec built heads out of sand and water. The Olmec had heads made in mexico by hand. When you look up Olmec you see a bunch of different heads made of sand. The Olmec made heads to show the religion by making heads out of sand.

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1153 Words | 5 Pages

The second characteristic of the Ewells that I evaluated was that they are a very dysfunctional family. In the town of Maycomb the Ewells are a disgrace and their reputation is not very good. They are considered a disgrace because they do not work at all. Also, they like to bend laws so they do not have to do things and they can do whatever. Lastly, the Ewells live

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510 Words | 3 Pages

In the book it states, “The Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” (Lee 40). The town does not like the Ewells and do not want a lot to do with them. The last reason is the Ewell’s have hunted out of

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593 Words | 3 Pages

Mr. Ewell is known throughout Maycomb as an ignorant man who is almost always unemployed and is the father of many children. He beats and possibly rapes his oldest daughter, Mayella Ewell, but blames his those problems on an African American man named Tom Robinson. Relief checks, given to him by the government, are spent on whiskey to go on day-long drinking trips. When Bob Ewell spends money meant to feed his kids it is shown that he values his children as an unimportant burden. Overall, it is obvious that Bob Ewell is a very arrogant and egocentric

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1253 Words | 6 Pages

By analyzing the struggle of these individuals throughout Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader observes that the prejudiced society hurts the mockingbirds; this is important because the author demonstrates it is a sin to harm an innocent being. To start, Mayella Ewell symbolizes a mockingbird that the discriminatory society misjudges as a result of her low social class. When Scout is in first grade, readers see that the Ewells are poor and struggle to survive. Atticus tells Scout, “the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” (Lee 40).

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765 Words | 4 Pages

Boo Radley, Mrs. Dubose, and Dolphus Raymond could not be more different, yet in a way, they are all seen as the same. To people of Maycomb, they were all seen as unorthodox eccentrics. People who were different and therefore must live away from society, away from the “normal” townspeople. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if the people of Maycomb weren’t prejudiced against them? If that were the case, they may have been able to live in harmony with the rest of society.

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508 Words | 3 Pages

The Ewells live behind the Maycomb dump and are the poorest family that lives in the town. But according to Jem they are the richest family there because they lived in Maycomb for a long time. Same as the Cunninghams, they are also poor and they don’t take things they can't repay. A good example is Walter Cunningham, in the book Miss Caroline tried to give Walter some money to get some lunch, but he didn’t have anything to pay back. Also when Calpurnia invited Walter into the FInch house, he was given food and then poured molasses all over it stating he eats old rotten food.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

Jem said that “there’s four kinds of folks in the world. The ordinary kind like us and the neighbors… the Cunninghams… the Ewells… and the negroes.” This statement exemplifies the social stratification in the small town of Maycomb. Even very young children are able to distinguish and differentiate between classes. The book depicts “the negroes” as the very worst of the classes, and people like the Cunninghams, as among the highest class, the “whites.”

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500 Words | 2 Pages

In chapter 17, it states “Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin” (Lee 227). The Ewells are very poor and don't take very good care of their stuff. Another example of poverty

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1960 Words | 8 Pages

The poor and lazy people in Maycomb are the Ewell 's family, they rarely worked, and when they did thy held a very low job. They made little money and therefore often turn into thievery. They did not come from a respectable families. The poor and hard working people in Maycomb are the Cunningham 's family, they really work hard for their money and food to put on the table, with their little money that they have they still take their children to school and get their education, they don 't rely on the government, the community really respect them because of the good things that they do. The Great Depression affect them but they didn 't allow it to overcome them.

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845 Words | 4 Pages

Arthropods have been on Earth for an incredible length of time, diverging from their annelid ancestor five hundred or six hundred million years ago (John R. Meyer). In their transition from an aquatic environment to a terrestrial environment they encountered many problems just as plants did. These problems were the effect of gravity, water conservation, accessibility to oxygen, reproduction and dispersal as well as establishing niches on land. Gravity posed as a problem to animals on land as the buoyant effect of water reduced the effect of gravity in the marine ecosystem but on land, they experienced the full effect. Water conservation served as another problem as these organisms were no longer surrounded by a vast body of water they had to develop means in which water could be stored, since it

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