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Themes In Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

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To Kill A Mockingbird
Behind every great story there is the coexistence of good and evil that is materialized into the essence of themes. These resulting themes are scattered throughout Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel revolves around the Finch siblings, Jem and Scout, as they grow up in the southern 1930s and start to discover the truth about their society with their father who is also a talented lawyer, Atticus Finch, and the people of Maycomb County. Atticus faces the dilemma of sticking to his virtues by defending Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman: Mayella Ewell. In doing so, he risks sacrificing the Finch’s reputation as well as his children or keeping his family’s reputation in tact …show more content…

This is a small price to pay because without his morals, without the pure essence of his being, he simply can no longer function as a proud member of a society. Another example of individual versus society is displayed in the article, Why I Joined the Klan, by C.P Ellis. This article explores the minds of white supremacists and why they join the Klan, “Deep down inside, we want to be part of this great society. Nobody listens, so we join these groups.”(Ellis 37). The individuals of the Ku Klux Klan join together to gain a voice in the ‘great’ society, however they don’t become apart of the society. Instead they become a symbol of hatred that is respected by few and is hated or feared by many. This ties to To Kill a Mockingbird because, like Atticus, the KKK stands up for what they believe in. However their extremist methods of expressing so leads them over the top to a position where they command more fear than respect. Overall the KKK, as a whole, can be seen as one single entity that will always be against society. Standing up for one’s beliefs is one thing that

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an amazing book with an abundant of surprises. Set back in the 1930’s in Maycomb, Alabama, when the Great Depression was happening and racism from the civil war still rages on in this southern city. All the quotes and themes in the novel can still be associated to life today. As the book was narrating in the past by Jean Louise Finch (Scout), there is one man that guides her and her brother, Jem Finch. It is their father, Atticus Finch.

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“To Kill A Mockingbird”(TKAM) is a story told from the viewpoint of a young girl named Scout and a narrator who was the grown up version of Scout. Harper Lee writes an incredible story about racial prejudice and how important it is to be a good person of society. Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer who has abandoned the southern tradition of racism and takes on a challenging case defending a black man named Tom Robinson. Tom was falsely accused of rapping Mayella Ewell, a young woman who lives by the dumps.

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Wilson explains that bravery to the Southern whites who took the law into their own hands, since the government were forced to take the law into their own hands, since the government had ignored them. So these white men created a club known as the Klux Klan “to protect the southern country from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution…”(11) Carter Woodson however, didn’t understand that the KKK were heroes but instead a terrorist group on the hunt for slaves only “could not tolerate the blacks as citizens. ”(13) As they created themselves to scare the freed men by violence.

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To Kill A Mockingbird “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by the author Harper Lee is about a tired little town in Alabama called Maycomb set back in the 1930’s. Atticus, father of Jem and Scout is the same man on the street than he is at home. He is very respectful and honest. Atticus gets appointed to defend Tom Robinson, an African American man who got accused by Bob Ewell for raping his daughter, Mayella.

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He appeals to his audience’s conscience by mentioning something that they can all relate

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In Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee focuses on discrimination in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, which is very present during the 1930's in the South. One of the characters, Atticus Finch, is a white lawyer who is defending a black man, Tom Robinson , of charges of rape. While defending his client, Atticus is also responsible for teaching his two children, Scout and Jem, the importance of moral development. Scout Finch is the ten year old daughter of Atticus Finch.

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The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about two kids, Jem and Scout, and their childhood in their small town Maycomb, Alabama. In the beginning of the novel, Jem and Scout were two innocent kids playing in the summer sun, until school came along. Jem was about twelve throughout the novel and Scout was eight, and considering that Jem was twelve in the novel, he was changing. During the middle of the novel a rape trial occurred, which included a black man being accused by a white woman of first-degree rape. Atticus, the kid’s father was defending the african american man; Tom Robinson.

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To Kill a Mockingbird, an inspiring tale exploring all the flaws in humanity, and giving an outline of the worst kind of people we can be. The book covers many controversial topics, such as rampant racism, prejudice, and hypocrisy. The story follows Jem and Scout Finch, the children of Atticus Finch, a lawyer who has been appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman in 1930’s Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus is forced to deal with the stress and judgment of defending Tom even though he knows he cannot win, while Jem and Scout face a similar judgment for being his children. Throughout the book, Lee shows through irony and characterization how hypocrisy and prejudice can permeate into a society's beliefs.

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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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"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a novel which portrays the social and racial injustices of the 1950's through the 1960's. Written by Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a fictional story that takes place in the static city of Maycomb during a time filled with racial injustice. What starts of being a tale of a group of children having fun and playing silly games quickly turns into a captivating and dramatic story filled with the crisis of conscience, racial grievance, and a battle between a lawyer and his family against what seems like the rest of the world. This novel demonstrates many themes throughout it's assortment of lovable characters, one of the main themes displayed by these characters is empathy. Characters Atticus Finch and Boo Radley illustrate

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Ismael Ali Mrs. Barth English 1, Per 5 28 May 2017 To Kill a Mockingbird In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch and her brother Jem are growing up in Maycomb, Alabama under the care of their kindhearted father, Atticus. In the first part of the novel, Scout and Jem hear rumors about their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley, and figure out that the stories about him might not be true. In part two the Finch children struggle to fit in in the racist society when their father defends an African-American man convicted of rape, and their view on the world matures throughout the case.

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To Kill A Mockingbird Themes “‘You never really understand a person until you consider his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it’” (Lee 39). This quote from the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee includes many characters who suffer from the Great Depression and other conflicts that break out in the town of Maycomb. Racism, poverty, and domestic violence attend in the book and continue their way through to create rising conflict between the people of Maycomb county. Atticus Finch is a lawyer of Maycomb and a father of two children, Jean Louise Finch, also known as Scout, and Jem Finch.

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a book mainly about the coexistence of good and evil. The book stresses and emphasizes on the exploration of moral nature in humans. There are many themes in this novel including courage, innocence, racism, femininity, etc. However the most prevalent theme in the book is innocence. Not just innocence in itself but the danger and harm evil poses to the innocent.

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“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, is an American classic about how two siblings deal with their white father defending a black man during the Depression in the made up town Maycomb, Alabama. The genre of the book is more of a coming of age story, social drama, and even a courtroom drama. Atticus Finch is the father of the two siblings, Jem and Scout. Scout narrates the story herself, telling about her experience with what happened in the retrospect, and she explains what happened to Tom Robinson and Atticus’s case.

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a story that takes place during the Great Depression in a small town located in southern Georgia in the 1930s. The book focuses on Jean Louise “Scout” and Jeremy Atticus “Jem” and their coming of age and the major events that made the two grow up. One of the events was the trial of the Mockingbird, Tom Robinson, in which their father, Atticus Finch, was defending Tom, a man of color. Mockingbirds are used throughout the book to represent people that were harmed by the society even though they were innocent. There is a common misinterpretation of the meaning behind the Mockingbird leading many to believe that Scout is the Mockingbird in the story.

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