Injustice In To Kill A Mockingbird

Facts before Feelings

Would someone’s life be different if they were not treated unfairly? In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the town of Maycomb let its preformed ideas of how one should act get in the way of logical reasoning. Several characters were unjustly treated because they were different than the others. The theme of injustice appears numerous times in the book, including the assumptions made against Boo Radley, the way Aunt Alexandra treats Walter Cunningham, and the false accusation of Tom Robinson.

Injustice often stems from the unknown, as the assumptions made against the mysterious Boo Radley shows. The neighbors see him as evil simply because he never comes out of the house. Since the neighbors did not know what Boo does in the house, they assumed that whatever he did must be wrong. Therefore people attribute any small crimes to be his work. Even when evidence clearly suggests otherwise, “people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions (Chapter 1).” Boo never harmed anyone, yet the neighbors still treated him unfairly for no other reason than his unknown actions.

For instance, the character Aunt Alexandra obsesses over heritage and often treats people with less background than her unjustly. When Scout asked her why she cannot play with Walter Cunningham, a classmate of hers that comes from a poor family, Aunt Alexandra said simply, “Because – he – is – trash, that’s why you can’t play with him (Chapter 23).” Aunt Alexandra thought that Walter was a bad influence because of his family. From the book, it is evident that Walter was a good person, but Aunt Alexandra treated him unfairly only because of their