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Racism And Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee displays the concepts of racism and prejudice as two siblings, Jem and Scout, make their way through a summer in the town of Maycomb. A town where prejudice is prevalent and the problem of racism is exponentially increasing, causing more and more social issues in Maycomb. At the beginning of the book, the main character, Scout, is shown as a little girl, very young and innocent, who has no concept of what racial prejudice is, even though it is spreading rapidly throughout her town. Although she starts out as this naive and simple girl, she makes her way through the summer and learns the reality of living in a world where racial prejudice is so heavily normalized. Scout is portrayed as a young girl …show more content…

She starts to pay attention more to the world around her and the concept of racial prejudice is starting to become more apparent to her. Scout is talking with Jem in this scene about how some people come from a different background and that determines whether or not they learn to read and write. Scout is contradicting Jem because she doesn’t think that it has to do with someone’s background. She doesn’t think that someone’s background is whether or not their family had been reading and writing for a long time. Jem talks about how Mr. Walter can’t really even sign his name and Scout told him, “No, everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin’. That Walter’s as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks”(207). I think that in this part of the book, Scout is starting to question why not all people are treated the same. She is wondering why all people can’t just get along and why some people go out of their way to hate one another. Scout is finally starting to realize how treating people differently because of their background or family is wrong and she’s questioning all that she has learned in her short time of life so

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As Atticus tells her, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (Lee 30). This quote shows Scout's developing understanding of others. That is one of the ways Scout comes of age

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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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This connects to the recurring theme of prejudice, as Scout is the minority in this situation, being the only one who can read well, and she is targeted for something that is not bad. This defines Scout by portraying how she can accurately understand the discrimination and its effects on her feelings. Furthermore, she has the sudden mental development that if you have fear of losing something, that something is more important now. This is yet another example of Scout as a character growing and learning from her lessons. Even though Scout’s discrimination can feel childish and insignificant, they link the broader theme of prejudice ideas ruining innocent values in a child’s world to that of a more serious situation like racial

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