One theme of To Kill a Mockingbird, portrayed excellently by Harper Lee, is racism causes inequality. For example, when going to Calpurnia’s church, Scout and Jem quickly noticed that ‘“there [weren’t] any hymn-books’” (Lee 64). This relates back to the theme of racism causes inequality because most of the black people couldn’t read so hymn-books would have been useless. However, Scout and Jem, who were white children, could read and preferred using hymn-books. This showed how the black and white school systems were unfair and how white education was far more superior to black education. Furthermore, when Tom Robinson went to court, it became obvious that that he did not rape Mayella Ewell due to the fact that Tom couldn’t use his left arm, …show more content…
It was up to the jury to decide if Tom was innocent, but to Maycomb’s turmoil, Tom was “‘Guilty… guilty… guilty… guilty…’” (Lee 112). This demonstrates that even though it was evident Tom was innocent, it had been his skin color which cost him to lose in court. In all of Maycomb history, a black man has always been convicted guilty. Tom was certainly not the first black man to be unfairly convicted and he will not be the last either. Finally, after Tom was shot seventeen times while attempting to escape from jail, it stunned the Finch family because they knew Tom was innocent. While this event seemed horrid and shocking to the Finch family was just “‘one Negro, more or less, among two hundred of ‘em? He wasn’t Tom to them, he was an escaping prisoner’” (Lee 125) to Maycomb county. This ties back to the theme of the novel because it is terrible to shoot a black person and most to have most white people not care or think twice about it. It shows that a white guard could shoot a black prisoner as many times as they want. They did not show any respect to them and the entire town of Maycomb was okay with this. The guards treated the black people like rabid animals, they are a disease and must be killed no matter who they are if they try to escape