“The Code”
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about a young girl nicknamed Scout Finch. The book starts when she attends elementary school for the first time with her brother Jem, who is four years older than her. This story is based in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. As Scout grows up she notices how unjust and cruel people can be. In the middle of the novel, Scout’s father, Atticus, has to defend an innocent black man in court. This is frowned upon by many people in the town due to “the code” that exists. Throughout the novel, we see interactions, or lack thereof, between white and black people due to the unwritten code; we learn about the code, meet characters controlled by the code, and meet some of the code’s perpetrators. “The Code” states that black and white people can’t have meaningful relationships. In the courtroom, Atticus gives his testimony and starts to describe the code. He says, “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man” (Lee 272). This quote is significant because Atticus explains how Blacks and Whites cannot be together
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One person is a girl named Lula who Jem and Scout encountered when they went to church with Calpurnia, the Finch’s African American cook. Lula says, “You ain’t got no business bringin' white chillun here--they got their church, we got our’n” (Lee 158). Lula is controlled by this code because she thinks that since Jem and Scout are white children, they should not be at a black church. She acts on this thought and makes sure the children feel unwelcome in her church. Bob Ewell is also controlled by this code, we see this when his daughter breaks it. He will do anything including killing an innocent man to make it seem like his daughter didn’t break the code. He even goes as far as to try and kill Atticus’s children because he called him out on