Symbolism In To Kill A Mockingbird

Can a fictional novel be a symbolic representation of the horrors of real life society? In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch is a little girl in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama who is telling her adventurous story from when she was a child. The novel takes place in the 1930’s in a town where everybody knows everybody and has deep rooted Southern values. Throughout the story, Scout, her brother Jem, and their best friend Dill grow up and deal with everything that is thrown at them. They soon have bigger problems than rude teachers or peculiar neighbors when Jem and Scout’s father, Atticus, takes a case defending a black man accused of rape. In Mark Twain’s LYNCHING Moral Cowardice, Twain talks about the reasons behind

Injustice is demonstrated in the article from National Geographic when Victoria, a teenager who is abducted by Serbian men and is forced to do things against her will for years, doesn’t receive any help until she takes matters into her own hands and escapes. In the text it says, “They led her on foot into Serbia and raped her, telling her that she would be killed if she resisted… was bought and sold by different brothel owners ten times over.” When speaking of her journey, Victoria says, “Banja Luka, was the worst- all the customers were cops” (Cockburn 2). This happens for years until she finally has a chance to escape whilst being four months pregnant and can seek the help she needs. It’s clear that nobody bothered to help her, seeing as many of her customers were cops, the very people who are supposed to prevent things like this. A very similar thing happens in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Bob Ewell accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter Mayella, but Atticus proves that it was most likely Bob who did it. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s dad, the person who should be protecting her at all costs. The most common injustice in the novel appears when the kids find the case between Tom Robinson and the Ewell family to be unfair, highly illogical, and racist. When the verdict of guilty is revealed to the town, Jem becomes upset and says, “You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that- you can’t”

In the article, Moral Cowardice, by Mark Twain, he demonstrates self-preservation whilst talking about how an increase in lynching is taking as a way to fit into their communities. When speaking about why the lynching is happening, Twain says, “It must be that the increase (in lynching) comes of the inborn human instinct to imitate” (Twain 1). The main reason behind the lynching was because people were cowards and were just bandwagoning on this theme as not to be shunned by the people in their communities. Aversion is a natural born instinct to humans, whether it’s something huge like rape, or something as small as who broke the glass plate. It’s human nature to want to protect ourselves from danger or getting in trouble. The same thing happens in To Kill a Mockingbird by the majority of the characters whenever something happens that incriminates them. A demonstration of self-preservation in the novel is when Atticus is cross-examining Mayella Ewell in court. During the cross-examination, Atticus says, “What did your father see in the window, the crime of the rape or the best defense to it? Why don’t you tell the truth, child, didn’t Bob Ewell beat you up?” (Lee 251). Mayella is trying to protect herself and her dad when she lies in court about who raped her. Atticus comes up with all of this evidence to push the blame onto Mr. Ewell that is very