To Kill a Mockingbird: Truth versus Prejudice
The abundance of prejudice found in today’s society is minimal compared to the overwhelming presence of biases and preconceptions in the Deep South in the 1930’s. Prejudice that did not only exclude those of a race that was not white, but also those whose gender, age, class, or mental health did not fit to characteristics of an ideal member of society. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee highlights this assault on variety better than any other literary work of the time. To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Scout, a young girl living in Alabama during the Great Depression, and emphasizes Scout’s struggle to form her own conclusions about the world around her, all while being hindered by her own prejudices and the prejudices of others. Today and in the past, prejudice makes a man blind to the truth. The greatest instance of prejudice blinding the truth in To Kill a Mockingbird is the trial of Tom Robinson. In spite of Atticus proving without a doubt that Tom could not have raped Mayella Ewell the jury lets their own prejudices and preconceptions take precedence over the facts of the case. To the members of an extremely biased jury, Tom was guilty the moment he stepped onto Ewell property. The jury closed their minds to the truths of the case because the facts did not
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Prejudices damage not only those they are inflicted on but those who hold them. When humans enable their prejudices to dictate their actions they are often left having lost the chance at knowing some extraordinary people. Clinging to prejudices is very tempting, because being wrong about them would mean it was necessary to change, and change is a scary thing. Despite this, a necessary lesson to learn is that seeing the truth and being proved wrong are all necessary to cause change, and change is necessary to become a better