“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” Nelson Mandela once said. While some get the education to change the world, some do not. Those people who do not become educated lose on the “most powerful weapon” to achieve success, to change the world. Those who do receive education can truly change the world. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the gap between those who receive education and those who do not tells much about the people of fictional Maycomb in Alabama. In Maycomb, a caste system seems to exist. However, in this caste system, not even those who are considered wealthy are wealthy. Finches, Cunninghams, Ewells, and the Black community represent the caste system, from top to bottom.
The Black community could be considered the lowest group in the caste system. During the Jim Crow times, Alabama was undeniably racist. The general population looked at blacks in distaste. Blacks, at this time, were considered inferior to whites. As a result of this prejudice—which sprouted from the times of slavery—blacks’ living conditions were second-class to the white community. Their living conditions’ badness were multiplied by the Great Depression, in which even whites went hungry. Blacks, no doubt, were the poorest—especially
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However, the Ewells are white, giving them more power than blacks. At Maycomb, blacks simply did not have as much access to living life compared to the whites. Even though the Ewells lived near the town dump to forage for food in the garbage, they were still white. As evidenced by their winning of the court case v. Tom Robinson, being a dirty white still overruled being an honorable black Maycombian. The race gap during the Great Depression in the South was tremendous. Dirty, filthy families like the Ewells still wielded considerable power compared to the blacks, whose rights were puny compared to the white