More handpicked essays just for you.
Critical interpretations of to kill a mockingbird
Themes in the novel to kill a mockingbird
Critical interpretations of to kill a mockingbird
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is seen as a book embedded into the American public school education system with good reasons. To Kill a Mockingbird symbolizes innocence, classism, and racism. We look through all of these statements from an 8 year old girl nicknamed Scout as she grows up during the Great Deppression, When Scout was around 7 years old, a trial shook the little town of Maycomb when a 19 year old girl accused a black man named Tom Robinson of raping her. Being set in the 1930’s when segregation was a prominent factor in America, With little evidence and witnesses Tom Robinson was still found guilty and was sentenced to death by electrocution.
In TKAM justice is not applied equally, especially regarding white and non-white, and adult and child. With white and non-white one of the main reasons Tom Robinson goes to court for rape is because that he is a black man testifying against a white family. Even though the evidence obviously points to Mayella trying to kiss Tom Robinson, Robinson is still considered guilty because of his ethnicity. This is extremely unfair and biased because he is obviously innocent, and being persecuted for no reason other than the fact that the judge and people in the town are racist. With adult and child, Atticus tries to keep his children from the court.
In the trial in a fictional novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Tom Robinson has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell. I firmly believe the jury's verdict should be that Tom is innocent. I believe the jury should arrive at this verdict because Tom had lost his left arm in cotton gin accident and Mayella was beaten on the right side of her face. “If her [Mayella's] right eye was blackened and she was beaten mostly on the right side of her face, it would be likely that a left-handed person did it” (238). It would be practically impossible for Tom to hurt the right side of Mayella’s face because his left arm is crippled.
In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the story is set in the 1900’s, Maycomb, Alabama. During this time there was racism in the south and segregation which separated the whites and blacks from everything. There was also the Great Depression, the whole country was poor and people living in the country had to trade and do other jobs for people to either pay them off or to buy something from them. The trial in this book is about Mayella and Bob Ewell, two white people, claiming and arguing that Tom Robinson, a black person, raped Mayella Ewell. This trial is really important because at that time in the south, white people took advantage of black people and their kindness and thought they would take that or shut up just because they were black.
Harper Lee’s fictional coming-of-age novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a novel that features a variety of judgments. Through Scout’s experiences, the novel reveals how unfair and hurtful judgments that people make can be. There are two moments in the novel where judgment is evident–this includes the trial of Tom Robinson as well as the mystery around Boo Radley. The novel is about judgment and prejudice, and Tom Robinson, being a black man in a segregated town, receives a lot of judgment. Boo Radley is also seen as creepy, and has a lot of rumors about him, which are very judgmental towards him.
The Mockingbird named Tom Robinson “That’s why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.” (100) To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that revolves around America’s discriminatory problems in the 1930s. It is set in 1933-1935 in a fictional town in Alabama called Maycomb which is where a young man is tried for a crime that didn’t take place, the rape of a young woman. It is told from the view of three small children called Jem, Scout and Dill. It was published in 1960 by Harper Lee and won the Pulitzer prize the next year.
The famous book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee explores the problem of scapegoating and racism in the Southern United states during the 1930s. The book examines the intricate social and racial aspects of a small town and how a delusion of moral superiority can result in the harassment and abuse of people who are perceived as being different or outliers. We will examine the concept of scapegoating in To Kill a Mockingbird in this essay, utilising two quotes to highlight the occurrence. The trial of Tom Robinson is one of To Kill a Mockingbird's most potent instances of scapegoating.
The ignorance of humans has created prejudice and brooding hate in societies. This reoccuring theme has been examined by Harper Lee in the classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Set in the late 1920, the society of Maycomb evidently showcases racial, gender-biased and social class prejudice, due to their
When Dill left the courthouse in tears, it was because Tom Robinson had been “proven” guilty of crime he didn’t commit, simply because he was black. Almost all of the reliable evidence given during the trial was thrown away and in its place was the fact that the offender was black and the thought that black people were less deserving than white people. To a child who was too young to ever even have the opportunity to experience this sort of biased judgment, witnessing an obviously innocent man be sent to a place he didn’t have any business in was simply horrific. He had come to the sudden (and not mention early) realization that sometimes people die for no good reason. Most frighteningly, this newly discovered Law of Life wasn’t restricted
I, member of the jury, am choosing to vote Tom Robinson not guilty on the account of rapeing Mayella Ewell. All evidence that arose during the trial proves his innocence in the case. Nevertheless, I have to make a decision based on my moral values, not the societal norms of Maycomb County. During the trial, the witness testimonies were continually contradicted.
Yesterday was Tom Robinson’s trial. I cannot explain how frustrated I am. I finally understand in what cruel society i am in. I cannot believe that the Maycomb folks took their prejudge into the trial. I was so confident about the trial.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In Harper Lee’s traditional novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee illustrates the theme of racism by the fear Bob Ewell inflicts upon Tom Robinson and his family and the life changing verdict Tom Robinson faces. This established fear causes Helen Robinson to avoid the usual route to and from town as well as to make the Robinson’s uneasy during the trial. No doubt Bob Ewell symbolized racism to Tom Robinson but also to his wife Helen Robinson. Bob Ewell harasses Tom’s wife, Helen, after the verdict of the trial.
Injustice is the plaque of the century. In the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, Lee happily shines a light on the subject of injustice. One theme Lee provides us with is that even if the odds are not in your favor (due to class, race, and color?), justice is a right and something worth fighting for. Lee portrays the theme through the trial in which a black man named Tom Robinson is accused of raping and beating Mayella Ewell with no sufficient proof, and his lawyer, Mr. Atticus Finch is determined and willing to help Tom return to his family.
As stated previously, the trial of Tom Robinson was unfair because the testimonies of the witnesses conflicted with each other, and his Eighth Amendment rights were violated. It is clear that when Harper Lee was writing this story that she was trying to expose the ugliness of the race relations in the U.S. of the time. Noting that this story was published in the 1960’s, close to the height of the Civil Rights Movement, To Kill a Mockingbird was making another statement, but one not-so fictional. There was a bigger, more serious, problem with the race relations in the United States. From the point-of-view of an innocent child, this novel forced people to see the power of injustice towards minorities—both then and
Prejudice Against African Americans Argumentative Essay In To Kill A Mockingbird, there is an inherent prejudice against African Americans, which is discussed by Harper E. Lee. This is still present in modern day society. On a micro level, To Kill A Mockingbird shows discrimination through Tom Robinson an African American man having his word of less value, than two Caucasian people in court . And Scout saying “nigger” without thinking, showing her internal prejudice.
