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Mob Violence In To Kill A Mockingbird Essay

1725 Words7 Pages

The popular home team broke out from their tight huddle and separated throughout the field. Their anguished faces concentrated on the last quarter; they are only 5 points up. The earnest and intoxicating energy transfers into the equally tense crowd. The fierce competition begins to boil up into the fans. Someone yells a blind comment within the rage and before anyone knows it, fights break out throughout the crowd. Teeth fly, blood sprays the walls like a fresh coat of crimson paint, over causes that the fans will soon forget. This mentality steels the minds of the fans. Innocent bystanders get wrapped up into these rioting mobs and police are left to wonder who is responsible and who is to be punished. This herd mentality has been known …show more content…

Mobs can be ended if they are in any way taken out of the excitement of the group, just as Scout stopped a mob through her unintentional comments. In Chapter 15 of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch isolates one of the violent people in the mob by asking him about his son and made “him feel at home” (Lee 205). The mob then breaks up, saving Tom Robinson and Atticus Finch’s lives. In a mob, as said before, people tend to feel individualized (Lee 201-207). One of the only ways to stop a mob from continuing, is to separate the mob from its people. Scout Finch was able to do this by asking Mr.Cunningham questions about his family. By relating to his family, Mr.Cunningham realized what he was doing and how it was going to affect his family and his life. Perhaps more important than this example is the obvious fact issued when Harper Lee famously writes, “A mob is always made up of people, no matter what” (Lee 210). People fuel a mob like gasoline in a semi trailer. Without people there is no mob. Consequences must be established in order to stripe the mob of its source and energy. These consequences must usher the culprits back into the fierce reality of what they have

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Harper Lee caused herd behavior in "To Kill a Mockingbird" when Atticus disrupted the ways of Maycomb by defending an African American. First, mob mentality, or herd behavior, refers to the tendancy of people to do over reactive things that they would not normally do with others. This tells us that people will act differently when they are part of a mob. When someone joins a mob, they can lose their individuality and adopt a mob mentality, such as killing a person. In chapter fifteen of "To Kill a Mockingbird", the mob outside the jailhouse were planning to kill Tom Robinson so their would be no trial.

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"At once the crowd surged after [him], ...screamed, struck, bit, tore," (Golding 169) these words demonstrate a repercussion of mob mentality. This phenomenon refers to the behaviours that one exhibits when in a group situation or mindset. Besides literature, it can be seen in everyday such as the riots in Vancouver or the short-lived popular trends. But how does this occur in the first place? Well, the existence of mob mentality in the modern world and in Golding's Lord of the Flies both suggest that the situation occurs because people are influenced by by their peers, the environment, and by their emotions.

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In the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, the author writes about what happens in the small southern town of Maycomb, in Alabama. Lee uses the influence of belief in traditions such as roles and family bonds to show that they are causes of conflict. Throughout the book, roles such as gender, age, race, and family confines characters to act, look, and even speak certain ways, causing internal, external, and family conflicts. This theme that different types of roles and family bonds are the root of conflict is developed through the use of physical setting, anti stereotype, and historical setting The author shows that Scout faces external conflicts caused by the pressure to fit into the stereotypical gender roles accustomed to girls at this time in history.

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