In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, we follow Jean Finch (Scout) and her older brother Jem growing up in Maycomb, Alabama. Their father, Atticus Finch is a lawyer and takes a case for a black man (Tom Robinson) who allegedly raped a white girl. During the case, it is clearly evident that tom could not have raped her because the claims conflict with Tom's only good arm. The town then becomes hostile toward the Finch family. Throughout the novel, we get symbols and implicit and explicit racism that foreshadows many further events in the book and in the rape case. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee uses Snow, the Snowman, and White Camellias to foreshadow further events in the book.
To begin, Harper Lee uses Snow to foreshadow Tom’s
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Duboses White Camellia to show white supremacy and the people trusting a white person's word over an African American person just because of one person's skin color. In Maycomb, there is an old woman named Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. She is a gardener who grows white flowers and is battling an addiction to morphine. Whenever Jem and Scout walk by her house she harasses them and one day Jem snaps and destroys her flowers, because of this, he has to basically babysit her and when she dies she gives him a White Camellia. Lee writes, “Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect camellia.” (Lee 128). This quote symbolizes her passing racism down to Jem and him rejecting it and later on talking to Atticus about how racism is unfair. After the trial of Tom Robinson Jem is unsatisfied with the results. He even notices how Tom is innocent and mad that just because of skin color Tom is convicted. Lee writes, “This was not good enough for Jem. “No sir, they oughta do away with juries. He wasn't guilty in the first place and they said he was.” (Lee 251). This quote is portraying how Jem rejected the flower (racism) from being passed down by Miss Dubose (racial bias) and how white supremacy is present in the