Can a fictional novel be a symbolic representation of the horrors of real life society? In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch is a little girl in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama who is telling her adventurous story from when she was a child. The novel takes place in the 1930’s in a town where everybody knows everybody and has deep rooted Southern values. Throughout the story, Scout, her brother Jem, and their best friend Dill grow up and deal with everything that is thrown at them. They soon have bigger problems than rude teachers or peculiar neighbors when Jem and Scout’s father, Atticus, takes a case defending a black man accused of rape. In Mark Twain’s LYNCHING Moral Cowardice, Twain talks about the reasons behind all of the lynching and attacks taking place, whether it’s aversion or pure cowardness. In an article by National Geographic, by Andrew Cockburn, he talks about the trans-Atlantic slave-trade and how it’s still destroying the lives of innocent people. Based on these sources, three common themes from To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1930’s are growing up, injustice, and self-preservation. The first theme shown throughout the novel is growing up. One example of growing up is when Scout learns to value even the smallest things in life as soon as her teacher says she can no longer read at night with Atticus. After her first day of school, Scout says to herself, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love