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Mob Mentality In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird Historical Paper

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”(Lee 103) This book is an example of how our world made and still makes mistakes with killing the innocent. Harper Lee used real-life events as inspiration for her novel to kill a mockingbird. In the novel, there are connections to the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials.
The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were horrible demeaning laws to keep African Americans lower than whites. The laws were designed to keep the white class higher and superior to blacks in all areas of work, education and society in general, the Jim …show more content…

Mob mentality is a terrible occurring mind set that unfornatualty all people get sucked into at one point or another in their lifetime. The definition of a mob mentality is unique behavioral characteristics that come out when a bunch of angry people are in large groups together. (Smith 1). Mob mentality happens because people tend to do what others are doing around them (Smith 1). Like peer pressure, people feel a pressure to do what everyone else is doing for fear of displacement. Some behaviors mobs exhibit is violence and fury (Emonds 1). People get angry together and it makes violence a quicker reaction and they feel as though it is more acceptable. Mob mentality did not only occur in the south as in the case of the Indiana lynching but in other places too. It can occur in more regular cases like in prison. (Edmonds 1 ). It is part of the human mind to be sucked into it. Mob mentality can be seen in To Kill a mockingbird many ways. An example of mob mentality in other places would be the riot against the police in south Korea (Edmonds 1). Mob mentality occurs in To Kill a Mockingbird in the Tom Robinson case. In the jury, not everyone wants to convict Tom, like Mr. Cunningham. Yet, everyone does end up convicting him because of that mob mentality to do what everyone else is doing (Lee 240). Mob mentality had a big influence on To Kill a …show more content…

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Pilgrim, David. “What Was Jim Crow?” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University. September 2000. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
V.,E. “Jim Crow.” Print: etching and ink. Jim Crow. Between 1835 and 1845. Prints and
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Beitler, Lawrence. Lawrence Beiter Photograph. 1930. NPRWeb. 7 Feb 2013. (-- removed HTML --) .
Edmonds, Molly. "How Riots Work" 12 July 2011. HowStuffWorks.com. 03 February 2015.Web. http://people.howstuffworks.com/riot.htm>
Holiday, Billie. “Strange Fruit.” Commodore Records, 1939. Vinyl.
Smith, S.E.. "What is Mob Mentality?" Wise Geek. Conjecture Corporation, 07/06/2012.
Web. 1 Aug 2012.
"Strange Fruit: Anniversary of a Lynching." Prod. Joe Richman, and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes. Radio Diaries. NPR: 06 Aug 2010. Radio. (-- removed HTML --)

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