Similarities Between Indian Horse And To Kill A Mockingbird

Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird both feature protagonists struggling against social injustices and the harsh reality of discrimination. While Saul Indian Horse and Scout Finch experience discrimination, Scout’s better reactions to bigotry render her ahead of Saul with hope for a better future. Firstly, both parties are shunned for simply being who they are. One of Saul’s experiences include getting tormented at the camp on Nagagami Lake by the white forestry workers because he is an “Indian”. They rough him up, both physically and verbally, calling him names like “Tonto” (Wagamese 173). This is simply one example of Saul’s encounters with racism, though it is plain to see that this is cruelty directed

In this situation young Scout is a social outcast from her peers solely for the reason of her father defending a black man. It is evident that both parties experience prejudice commonly in the societies that they live in. While both cases are different, they both receive distaste that isolates them from the people around them because of their beliefs and appearance. Scout and Saul also end up handling these problems rather differently. Saul’s racist co-workers are deterred from bothering him one night when Saul gets pushed past has limit. After being insulted by a large Swede, Saul fights the man: “... with my other hand and latched onto his throat. I squeezed. Hard” followed by “As I let him drop to the floor I punched him in the head with everything I had, and he crumpled…” (Wagamese 175). Saul lets his rage boil up and explode, taking his pain out on others. Scout, on the other hand, handles her issues quite differently. She prefers to talk her problems over with someone; the someone usually being her father, Atticus Finch. After Cecil Jacobs humiliates her at school, Scout goes home and tells her father about her incident, asking him “Then why did Cecil Jacobs say that you defended niggers?” (Lee

Instead of acting irrationally and with rage, she consults a person she looks up to, deals with the issue and let’s go of the emotional baggage. Scout and Saul deal with their problems of discrimination in very different ways which ultimately result in very different outcomes for the way their lives are left at the end of each book. Lastly, Scout and Saul’s future outlooks are rather unalike. By the end of the novel, Saul is still getting over his childhood traumas and rebuilding past friendships. He only recently begins trying to work through his sorrows without alcohol. He shows promise for a future where he is a changed man in the last line of the book: “He won that first faceoff, but I didn't care” (Wagamese 221). This shows that Saul is only playing for fun. He no longer needs to play hockey with that competitive edge to push him further and take his mind off of his problems in life. He shows great hope for self improvement. Scout trumps this, however. Near the end of To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout realizes “you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them” (Lee 279). She has learned a life lesson that is critical for the betterment of her