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Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And 12 Angry Men

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Though everybody is special in their own ways, it’s unfortunate that they can be judged by their looks, race, and ethnicity. A mind has a complex network in itself. The way one’s thought process can affect others actions, can make a significant lifesaving difference. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird and movie 12 Angry Men, the court trials and the jury, judges the characters based on the fact that they come from different backgrounds. Although the young child and Tom Robinson differ in regard of who there are as people, their trials are very similar in regard to the fact they are taken with prejudice towards the defendants and that the protagonists never gave up in hopes of justice for them. In both these stories the two defendants are very …show more content…

The first similarity is in how the attitude others had for the case itself. In both of these stories the defendants were judged with extreme prejudice, either in the courtroom or in the juror’s room. People on the case couldn’t look past the skin color and backgrounds of the defendants and judge them based on who they really are were. One example of how society looked at Tom Robinson and Atticus defending him in To Kill a Mockingbird is shown by this quote from chapter 11, spoken by a neighbor, Mrs. Dubose to Atticus’s daughter Scout, “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” This quote clearly represents the attitude that the society of Maycomb had over the case. Another example from the movie is when the fifth juror called the boy, “trash” because of his slum background. This shows how some of the rude jurors couldn’t look past the boy’s current state and for who he really was, to accurately judge the case. Prejudice masks the truth from being accurately …show more content…

In both, To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men, the protagonists were key characters. The story of To Kill a Mockingbird had Atticus, the protagonist, doing his best to fight a case that had very slim chances of success. As he was defending for an African American man in the 1930’s he faced a great deal of opposition from his community and court. In 12 Angry Men a character named Davis or also known as juror number eight, the protagonist, had a reasonable doubt in the guilt of a boy accused of murder. Out of twelve jurors, when taking a vote he was the only one who had chosen “not guilty”. As conversations and debates arise he uses viable evidence and details of the case to slowly persuade other members on the jury to choose not guilty and acquit the boy. The similarity ¬¬¬between the two protagonists is that both Atticus and Davis did not give up from trying to prove there defendants as ‘not guilty’. The two kept persevering. Even though Atticus did not get a chance to prove his defendant Tom Robinson to be not guilty and Davis, with the other convinced jurors, did, they both looked beyond backgrounds and skin color and avoided prejudice to truly understand and solve the

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Harper Lee´s life is similar to the character Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird. The Scottsboro trial was occurring when Harper Lee was growing up, and the Tom Robinson case was occurring when Scout was growing up. Harper Lee used lots of her family names for names for people for To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee and Scout were both tomboys and both a had boy bestfriend.

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Both were similar in that they were dealing with racial segregation in what is termed the deep southern states. So their environments were similar. but different in perspectives. one being a child and the other a man. Scout was raised to be open minded in an environment that nurtured her in the belief that all people were equal regardless of race or class.

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Mrs. Rodriguez 10th Grade Advanced English Pd. 7 3 May, 2017 In 1925 to 1939 the nation’s incarceration rate increased from 79 to 137 per 100,000 residents (Eval). There was a greater imprisonments of blacks than there were whites (Eval).

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842 Words | 4 Pages

Author Harper Lee, in her novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”, depicts a court trial in which Atticus Finch, a Maycomb County lawyer, attempts to defend an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, who was falsely accused of rape and beating by a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Finch’s purpose is to prove Tom’s innocence to the court and avoid an inaccurate conviction. He adopts a deliberate tone in order to rule the jury’s speculation in favor of Robinsons guiltlessness. Atticus begins his argument by contrasting social moralities versus actual law.

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747 Words | 3 Pages

People tend to base characteristics of people pretty quickly; likewise, their personalities. Most people base their opinions on stereotypes. Reginald Rose and his play “12 Angry Men” demonstrate how people are quick to judge other people based on looks. In the movie all twelve jurors must decide if a young boy is guilty or innocent. At the beginning of the movie/play-write, only one juror, juror eight, decides the boy is innocent.

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769 Words | 4 Pages

The Tom Robinson case displays the brutality of both social and racial prejudice. Despite the jurors long decision making process, they decided to vote along racial lines (which is not a surprise in Maycomb) without any regard for truth or justice. The people involved in the case are Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, Atticus Finch, Bob Ewell. Tom is being accused of raping Bob Ewell’s daughter, Mayella, and this allows the author, Harper Lee, to dig deeper into issues of prejudice in the city of Maycomb. To begin with, the trial gives readers an opportunity to witness Atticus at work.

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1018 Words | 5 Pages

The first similarity between two books is the display of morality and ethics. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is assigned by Judge Taylor to defend Tom Robinson in trial. Atticus chooses to defend Tom Robinson honorably, despite the color of his skin and the alternate opinions from most of the people of Maycomb. When Scout asks Atticus why he is defending Tom Robinson, Atticus explains to Scout that is the right thing to do, and that he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t give Tom Robinson a fair trial.

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569 Words | 3 Pages

In the play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, we can see that prejudice gets in the way of truth. Many of the jurors that participated have let prejudice get in their way to see the truth and look at the real situation and facts, for example, Juror Three, who “is a very strong, very forceful, extremely opinionated man within whom can be detected a streak of sadism… is intolerant of opinions other than his own, and accustomed to forcing his wishes upon others.” He has a son that he identifies as a “tough guy”, which is one of the descriptions of the 19-year-old accused, Juror Three let the image of his own son be reflected on the boy and made him think unfairly. Getting to the bottom of a complex issue takes time and effort. At the beginning of the play, most jury members wanted to get over the case and go home as early as they could, but one of the jury members, Juror Eight, who was sure the boy was not guilty, took many hours to question the evidence and the case and murder itself, but he was not the only one as other jury members also spoke about what they thought in the past options, fairly quick, it was almost six in the evening and Juror Six wanted to leave to go to his family, it may have been more of an excuse to leave, but the jurors did not let him leave because they had gone far enough to decide where the trial was going

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1166 Words | 5 Pages

Despite racial inequalities in the South, Atticus sticks to his own morals and agrees to be the defending lawyer for Tom Robinson, a black man being accused of raping a white woman. Although Atticus’ defense in court was thorough and clearly proved Tom’s innocence, the jury was prejudiced towards black folks and convicted Tom as guilty. Nonetheless, Atticus is still a hero despite losing the case. He has the courage to stand up for what he believes in, fights with reason rather than guns, and has utmost determination, making him a hero despite being just an average human being. Ultimately, his thoughts and actions set the stage for major changes in the meaning of equality throughout Maycomb County, changing lives of numerous people.

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, ignorance, prejudice, and racism is all illustrated by the public education system, neighbors, and the trial. We all know that one person who refuses to accept that everybody’s equal. Go ahead and think of them. Now, picture this: You are in a courtroom on trial for the rape of a 19 year old white girl. You know that you didn’t do it, and there is overwhelming evidence pointing toward the fact that you didn’t.

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1131 Words | 5 Pages

Lee uses Miss Gates’s ironic views of Hitler and Tom’s trial to show how racial prejudice causes crimes against African Americans to be considered less than crimes committed against white people. A mockingbird is then used to symbolize Tom Robinson as an innocent person wrongly convicted of a crime because of his skin color. The misunderstood characterization of Arthur Radley shows how society will let prejudice guide their imaginated view on the lives of people they don't understand. All three characters provide examples of how a preconceived opinion of one person or a whole race can cause drastic misunderstandings and

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857 Words | 4 Pages

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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803 Words | 4 Pages

This process continues throughout the course of the movie, and each juror’s biases is slowly revealed. Earlier through the movie, it is already justifiable to label juror 10 as a bigoted racist as he reveals strong racist tendencies against the defendant, stating his only reason for voting guilty is the boy’s ethnicity and background. . Another interesting aspect of this 1957 film is the “reverse prejudice” portrayed by juror

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591 Words | 3 Pages

The justice system that relies on twelve individuals reaching a life-or-death decision has many complications and dangers. The play Twelve Angry Men, by Reiginald Rose, illustrates the dangers of a justice system that relies on twelve people reaching a life-or-death decision because people are biased, they think of a jury system as an inconvenience, and many people aren’t as intelligent as others. The first reason why Reiginald illustrates dangers is because people can be biased or they can stereotype the defendant. The Jurors in Twelve Angry Men relate to this because a few of them were biased and several of them stereotyped the defendant for being from the slums. The defendant in this play was a 19 year old kid from the slums.

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218 Words | 1 Pages

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there are many similarities between the narrator, Scout, and the author, Harper Lee. For instance, both grew up in the time of the great depression with little money to do extra things; therefore, they relied on their imaginations to entertain them for hours (Haggerty) . Comparatively, both were tomboys in their youths and grew up in small towns where girls were expected to wear dresses and act like a lady. Also, both Harper Lee and Scout both grew up with their fathers being lawyers for their town and would often hear of cases that they worked on (“Harper Lee”) . Similarly, when writing her book a “mad dog warning” was released, no doubt giving the idea for the episode of the mad dog Tim Robinson.

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