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Social Classes In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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Social classes are demonstrated in both To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in current times. In To Kill a Mockingbird, social classes are brought up throughout the book and it is visible that the lowest stance in Maycomb is those who are black. In the book, it says “ First Purchase was unveiled and unpainted within. Along its walls unlighted kerosene lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. Behind the rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church’s only decoration except a rotogravure print of Hunt’s The Light of the World. There was no sign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs- the familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw every Sunday. It was dim inside, with a damp coolness …show more content…

Their church from the description is run down because of the lack of funds and are missing a piano along with books due to most being illiterate. From the placement in social classes, no one is willing to help refurbish and help those in need. My personal feelings about this quote are that everyone deserves an equal playing field, no matter what your class may be. Another example of social classes can be found in the article Crossing Class Lines written by the New York Times. In this article, they created an experiment on the friendship between classes along with the results on those who chose to be friends with other those from other classes. In the article, it says “Participants were less interested in spending time and becoming friends with the person when the profile described a cross-class partner, compared to a same-class partner. This was especially true of upper-class participants, who were much less interested in engaging with a lower-class person than with an upper-class counterpart” (Côté and Kraus). The article talks about how upper-class participants would choose a friend or partner in the same class rather than crossing

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In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee teaches us about the town of Maycomb County in the late 1930s, where characters live in isolation and victimization. Through the perspective of a young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, readers will experience prejudice Maycomb brings during times where people face judgement through age, gender, skin, and class. Different types of prejudice are present throughout the story and they all contribute to how events play out in the small town. Many of those in Maycomb face and express sexism, racial discrimination, and classism their whole lives. This disables the people who fall victim from living their life comfortably in peace.

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In Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, we can see there is a clear disparity the between classes, especially between the blacks and the whites in Maycomb county. Throughout the book, it is implied that (as far as class is concerned) the richest black person is far lower than that of the poorest white person. Due to the class disparity between the two races, the whites of Maycomb would be considered to be "better off " than the blacks and are also considered above them. When Scout, Jem, and Dill see Tom empathizes with Mayella, their idea of class is flipped upside down. This would teach our main characters that empathy transcends race and

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How does Harper Lee vividly capture the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb county in ‘To kill a mockingbird’? In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird’, Harper Lee conveys the theme of racism and social inequality by setting up the story in Maycomb, a small community in Alabama, the U.S back in 1930s. Lee presents some of the social issues of 1930s such as segregation and poverty in the novel. These issues are observed and examined through the innocent eyes of a young girl, Scout, the narrator.

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In conjunction with this time of calamity, Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird instills an apparent disparity of economic classes that is distributed amongst its characters throughout the Alabama town of Maycomb. This notion of economic disparity is manifested

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Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird famously said in his closing arguments: "You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some negro men are not to be trusted around women- black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and no particular race of men." (pg 232) What Atticus is trying to convey is a foreign concept to most people in Maycomb county. Atticus is trying to convey a point of equality and no prejudice in a world of social inequality which, as one can imagine, didn 't go over so well.

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In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee demonstrates the small, imaginary town, the Maycomb County, as a place where racism and social inequality happens in the background of 1930s America. Not only the segregation between whites and blacks, but also the poor lived in a harsh state of living. As Scout, the young narrator, tells the story, Lee introduces and highlights the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb County by using various characters such as Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Mayella Ewell. Firstly, Harper Lee portrays Boo Radley as a victim of social inequality through adjectives and metaphor in the phrase, “There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten;” ‘Long jagged scar that ran across his face’ tells us that Boo Radley has stereotype about his appearance, which forces to imagine Boo as a scary and threatening person. The phrase, ‘yellow and rotten’ make the readers think as if Boo Radley is poor and low in a social hierarchy, as he cannot afford to brush his teeth.

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This shows how social classes separate people even if they are from the same place. Poor people were with poor, and and middle classes people or rich people with their groups. That was not discrimination about race, it was about social classes. The highest class in Maycomb, Alabama consisted of those who were white, came from good family lines and worked for a living. This class was treated with mostly respect, but they were expected to maintain their integrity of white peoples and their own families.

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Maycomb’s education system is depicted as a failure throughout chapters 2 and 3. Lee’s description of the student’s poor learning attitudes, the teacher’s unskillful teaching methods, all highlights the failure of Maycomb’s education system. Lee depicts the failure of the Maycomb education system through the description of elderly students in Scout’s first grade class. When the class was questioned about their knowledge on alphabets, Scout explained by saying “Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.” The adjective “failed” depicts that the students did not learn much in Maycomb and was unable to take in knowledge under the Maycomb education system.

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Racism, family background, and wealth are the three main forms of social inequality that appear multiple times in To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee proves that the Negroes are not respected at all simply because of their skin color. They are so disrespected and looked down on to the point they have their own little community out of the town away from the white people. Although, the colored are racists towards the white people in Maycomb.

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