In Harper Lee’s historical fiction novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, two children live in a chaotic world of racial injustice and poverty. In this book, two siblings named Jem and Scout Finch grow and mature in a mysterious area of people battling and supporting racism. Throughout this book, Harper Lee uses symbolism to provide the view of racism. While doing this, she also uses selective choices of diction to shape the story. Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird with a purpose, to bring awareness to racial injustice through hidden symbols and diction.
To start off, the book To Kill A Mockingbird's name alone is a claim that mockingbirds are similar to African-Americans. Atticus says to Jem and Scout "It is a sin to kill a mockingbird"(90) because mockingbirds are harmless. This is similar to the situations that people of color frequently face. Throughout history, black people have been judged for their skin color time and time again. This occurred when Africans were brought on a boat to America in the 1600s. People of color were also discriminated against during the time of when the Underground Railroad was made and the Civil War was fought.
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Through the type of language Lee writes him using, he is able to expose the picture of racial injustice. As Atticus is talking to his daughter, Scout, Atticus says “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” (30), explaining that she doesn’t know what people are going through. Atticus could’ve said it in a different way, but he said "into his skin” (30) because there is racial injustice in the book. This slight change of words that Lee imported into Atticus’ dialogue is also talking about how different ethnicities face different problems. People of color are often discriminated against for their color of skin, while white people aren’t as often, if