To Kill A Mockingbird Hope Analysis

Restoration of Hope Imagine you were a black man living in the 20th century, and you were accused of raping a white girl. Because she is white and you are black, you are declared guilty and given the death penalty. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, a man of color named Tom Robinson was accused of raping a white girl. Atticus, the father of the main character Scout and her brother Jem, is selected to defend Tom from the death penalty and a crime he didn’t commit. Scout retells their story and eventually Tom’s death. In the article Lynching by Mark Twain, Mark talks about how the white population are cowards, but if a few brave men don’t participate in lynching, the rest of the population will catch on. Also in the article There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the transAtlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in human rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach- and in the destruction of lives by Andrew Cockburn, we can see the horror of people in Serbia selling girls into slavery. Both articles incorporate the themes in To Kill A Mockingbird. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, three themes are facing reality, losing hope, and the power of words. The first theme of To Kill A Mockingbird is facing reality. In the article Lynching, the men of the 20th century with courage must shed light on their disapproval of lynching people of color. In the text it says,

Many characters had to face reality to see how people of color are really treated. Other characters lost hope for the white race to recognize people of color as equals. And several other characters used the power of words to restore that hope and help other characters throughout the course of the book. Eventually, the power of words and books like To Kill A Mockingbird made white people face the reality that people of color are in fact their