Tim Johnson was not just a lovely dog that was unexpectedly infected by rabies. He was not just introduced for entertainment. Tim Johnson was introduced to for a far greater reason. This scene is a revelation to the reader. This scene reveals how Atticus Finch is always called upon to the dirty work for the county.
In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee talks about discrimination based on gender role, age, and skin color. The characters in this book all have different personalities that influences others. Maycomb, Alabama in 1930’s is where everything happened with slavery and struggling with being poor. The characters Scout, Jem, and Dill had a strong bond and had lots of courage. Shows that justice means other things to other people.
In chapter 10 of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, an allegory for racism, prejudice, and injustice is created through the mad dog Tim Johnson as he wanders through the Finches’ hometown of Maycomb. Scout’s narration of the mad dog’s appearance, his death by Atticus's gun, and his disposal after death all combine to shape him into a symbol of the injustice and racism prevalent in Scout’s childhood and during the Great Depression. Tim Johnson is a significant literary device in Lee’s narrative that conveys the story’s central themes of how inequality becomes embedded in a community despite its danger and what measures the community needs to take to eliminate it. When every person in Maycomb gets sent indoors to avoid the mad dog, Scout observes
Tim Johnson is a sickly, and rabid dog briefly mentioned in the story. Even short of time the dogs appears, Tim has an impact on the story. The first time, when people in Maycomb County knew him, Scout describes him as, “Tim was a liver-coloured bird dog, the pet of Maycomb” (Lee 105) these are the characteristics of the rabid dog. In the quote, the section refers to “bird-dog” is attractive. A bird-dog is “a gundog trained to hunt or retrieve birds” by Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
In Part One of Harper Lee’s commended American novel To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), the rabid dog that roams Maycomb’s streets and the town’s perceptions of the dog are direct symbols for the varying degrees of racism that pervades small town life. Maycomb, a small Southern community, is chock full of conscious bias and racism. One day, a dog named Tim Johnson is discovered by the narrator, Scout, and her brother Jem, to be rabid. Throughout the chapter, Tim Johnson becomes increasingly fitting as a symbol of racism in this novel. Calpurnia, the Finch’s African American maid, proclaims: “I know it’s February, Miss Eula May, but I know a mad dog when I see one.
The obvious symbol regarding racism resembles the mad dog. The mad dog was wandering through the streets of Maycomb looking for trouble and figuratively so does racism. As said by Adam Smykowski, “Tim Johnson, represents prejudice, and how, like a rabid dog, it spreads its disease throughout the south.” (Smykowski 2). This best quote most deeply represents the fact that Tim Johnson is another way of explaining the problem of racism in Maycomb.
Harper Lee also uses Tim Johnson, the mad dog, as a symbol of racism. Tim Johnson is being taken over by the disease of rabies, just like Maycomb County is being taken over with racism. Racism, like rabies, is controlling every decision and move that the people of Maycomb, or Tim Johnson, carry out, mindlessly killing or hurting everything in their sight (Shmoop Editorial Team). The people of Maycomb are not thinking about what they are doing. They do not distinguish a person, since their judgment is clouded by the racist thoughts that are influenced by the county, they discern an object, or even an animal, that they can do anything they want to do with.
Mockingbirds are beautiful, singing many songs. Showing up in many ways. They do nothing other than amuse and sing for listeners enjoyment, but why hurt them? Jeremy Finch, son of Atticus Finch, brother of Scout and a citizen of Maycomb. In the beginning Jem is ten years old and through the book ages three years and becomes thirteen.
Bob Ewell throughout the novel always was a very evil character. On page 320, “ Mr Robert Ewell asked Mr. Gilmer. That’s my name cap’n. Bob Ewell acts like the trial does not mean nothing and does not take it seriously. Also Bob Ewell was very mad when Atticus had exposed his anger issues to the jury.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that show the life of a southern state od Alabama during the “black racism” time period, where majority of the people had the mentality that (quote) with the exception of a few. To chosen to portray it from the eyes of Scout Finch, from a child’s point of view. Living in Maycomb, in the midst of a conservative society of the 1930’s and 20’s Southern America Scout Finch is an extra ordinary child.
The rifle cracked a hole. Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over, and crumpled on the sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap.” (Lee 127) Lee personifies the rabid dog by giving it a human name and uses its sickness as a metaphor for racism’s similar nature, comparing racism to a rabid disease that cannot be fought by the sheriff but by the town's lawyer. When Atticus shoots Tim in one shot, that foreshadows Atticus’s role later in the novel as someone who will stand against
Tom Robinson, a main character in the novel, is accused of beating and raping a young girl named Mayella Ewell. Tom is a young African-American man who worked close to the Ewells. Tom and his family are extremely poor in the community. “Yes suh, I had to serve ‘cause I couldn’t pay the fine.’ (Lee 1930) Walter Cunningham is a child that goes to school, mostly on the first day, with Scout and Jem.
Lee uses Tim, the rabid dog, to show Atticus shooting down racism in Maycomb. Jem and Scout were walking and they saw Tim. They warned the town and
How does Harper Lee vividly capture the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb county in ‘To kill a mockingbird’? In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird’, Harper Lee conveys the theme of racism and social inequality by setting up the story in Maycomb, a small community in Alabama, the U.S back in 1930s. Lee presents some of the social issues of 1930s such as segregation and poverty in the novel. These issues are observed and examined through the innocent eyes of a young girl, Scout, the narrator.
In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee teaches us about the town of Maycomb County during the late 1930s, where the characters live in isolation and victimization. Through the perspective of a young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, readers will witness the prejudice that Maycomb produces during times where people face judgement through age, gender, skin colour, and class, their whole lives. Different types of prejudice are present throughout the story and each contribute to how events play out in the small town of Maycomb. Consequently, socially disabling the people who fall victim from living their life comfortably in peace. Boo Radley and his isolation from Maycomb County, the racial aspects of Tom Robinson, and the decision Atticus Finch makes as a lawyer, to defend a black man has all made them fall in the hands of Maycomb’s prejudice ways.
