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Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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Harper Lee’s book To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in a small town in Alabama called Maycomb. There is a rape trial going on and the defendant, Tom Robinson, has Atticus Finch as his lawyer. This caused people to be extremely against and rude over the fact that Atticus aims to defend him. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee argues that prejudice often causes ill-mannered behaviors, segregation, and condescending demeanors. One event in Maycomb that shows prejudice often causes ill-mannered behaviors, segregation, and condescending demeanors is how people treated Atticus, Jem, and Scout after Atticus got hired to defend Tom Robinson. Atticus is truly trying to defend Tom, a black man, which is causing the anger and even …show more content…

Mayella got beaten up and supposedly raped and Bob Ewell is accusing Tom, a man of color, of the crime. Tom was polite and respectful and unfortunately was in a really bad situation because of his skin color, “Tom Robinson’s manners were as good as Atticus’s. Until my father explained it to me later, i did not understand the subtlety of predicament: he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live long, so he took the first opportunity to run- a sure sign of guilt”(Lee 260). The case had no evidence incriminating Tom Robinson, yet they still come back with a guilty verdict. The majority of citizens did not care if Tom robinson was innocent, they only wanted to see him in jail and maybe even his lynching, “It was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd. ‘It ain’t right’ he muttered”(Lee 284). Tom Robinson’s trial showed how prejudice can invoke ill-mannered behaviors, segregation, and condescending demeanors. It shows how people make bad judgements and how it could end up with an innocent behind bars just because of the color of their

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‘Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” (Lee 135) A hateful disposition was placed on Atticus along with the rest of his family because of his appointed client. Atticus was representing a person of color in a court case which caused a wedge to be driven between the rest of the Maycomb community and the Finches. The people did not agree with a white man representing a colored man so the community looked down upon Atticus and the other

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Prejudice in Maycomb County Throughout history, prejudice has followed certain groups. In TKMB prejudice is very strong and reaches a boiling point. In TKMB by Harper Lee many different themes are presented. Prejudice is one of them.

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In the passage, Lee argues that racism and prejudice are often due to ignorance, and that the only way to get rid of racism is to develop acceptance and understanding. After Tom Robinson is killed, Mr. Underwood compares his death to the killing of “songbirds by hunters and children.” The word “songbirds” is an obvious reference to Atticus’s lessons about mockingbirds, in which he states killing them is a sin. Killing a songbird, according to him, is a sin because such birds are innocent and do nothing but sing. Lee’s diction to shows the reader that Tom was an innocent man, killed by Maycomb’s racism and hatred.

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells a story of racial prejudice during the Depression and how it is combated. The main development in the novel is that a Atticus, the father of Scout and Jem, has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman named Mayella. Many people in the town of Maycomb, particularly people involved with the case of Tom, have a negative attitude towards African Americans. Prejudice was a terrible issue in the South during the Depression, but Atticus Finch shows that racial injustice can be combated in two main ways, each having different levels of effectiveness.

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Maycomb is prejudice in so many ways. The way they live life is through racism and money. They don't treat black people and poor people right. They humiliate the poor, make fun of negro and negro protectors. White people feel like everything is their property.

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In this essay i'm going to be talking about a few chapters in to kill a mockingbird.the chapters I will cover chapters 18-22. In these chapters I will be talking about the times when prejudice was shown. In the first paragraph prejudice was shown when jem and scout concluded things about their father, that weren't true. In the second paragraph the jury showed prejudice when they picked one race over another. Jem and Scout thought their father was boring

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In Harper Lee's “To Kill A Mockingbird” there is a recurring theme of bigotry. During the 1930s racial intolerance was at its peak. This is expressed when Tom Robinson is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Since Tom Robinson was black it would be easier for Bob Ewell to win in court. The people in Maycomb were oblivious to what was right in court.

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Essay In the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, there are many important messages shown throughout the book. However the primary focus was set on racial prejudice that existed in the 1930s-1940’s in the fictional town of Maycomb County. The racism in the novel was very much a reality in 1930s-1940s America. A very good example of the racial prejudice that existed was in the courtroom during Tom Robinson’s trial, an innocent Negro man held against his will for a crime he did not commit.

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The novel To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee is an excellent example of acceptance of all people. The main character, Scout, believes that you cannot categorize people. Mr. Underwood considers that the murder of any cripple is wrong, and even a sin, no matter their color or circumstance. Atticus, the most respectable character in the novel, argues that their African American cook is family, something that rarely happened during that time period. Overall, the characters in the novel show different perspectives on prejudice.

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In To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the town of Maycomb, Alabama experiences deep divides with the presence of many different types of prejudice. Readers explore the understanding of what it means to kill a “mockingbird”. The “mockingbird” figure revolves around the idea of a misjudged and mistreated individual, being taken advantage of while they are causing no harm upon the world. There are two prominent “mockingbird” figures in the novel, one being a black, crippled man with the name of Tom Robinson. The second being a more interesting and profound character called Boo Radley.

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The testimonies reveal how deep-rooted the racism within Maycomb runs, as it is present even in court rulings and how casually present it is. The court is taking place, and the order of prosecutor’s witnesses who are: Mr. Heck Tate, the sheriff; Mr. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s father; and Mayella Ewell, the one who is accusing Tom Robinson of raping her. When it’s Mr. Ewell’s turn to speak, he does so with many racial slurs and slang embedded in his accusations. When relaying what he saw to the jury, he points at Tom and yells “―I seen that black n*gger yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!” Mr. Ewell, who, although, has never been a part of a court case or viewed one, doesn’t truly care, or notice, that so far into the formal case, not one person has used racial slang to talk about Tom, and uses the term n*gger quite casually.

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Created in 1960, Harper Lee’s book, “To kill a mockingbird” extends far beyond just being a fictional book about a town set in a more racially biased point in history, and actually shows what prejudice and instances of racism were like in famous cases in history and how some of the lessons taught in the book still can be found in modern times. Lee shows the theme of how difficult it is to solve racial issues, if not everyone is willing to change or even help. In the novel the theme is shown majorly in three different instances, one being the Tom Robinson trial. Before, during and after the trial, almost everyone in Maycomb already knew that the trial would have a massively unfair and biased outcome, and that Tom would not have a chance at

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In the South of the United States in the 1930´s, the justice system was very unfair towards colored people. Colored people that were sent to court could not receive a fair trial because of the prejudice and racism from the jury. This happened all the time, especially in Maycomb Alabama. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a colored man named Tom Robinson was convicted of assaulting a white woman just because of the color of his skin. Tom Robinson should have been found not guilty for many reasons.

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