“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding,” said Mahatmas Gandhi, a devoted follower of non-violence. He was someone who always maintained his composure and stay level-headed, which helped him make judicious decisions. Anger has the effect making a person lose their calmness force them to make haste decisions. Add intolerance to the mixture and the result is an immoral decision based upon a judgment clouded by prejudice. Anger, ranging from a strong feeling of annoyance to a strong feeling of hostility, can provoke blindness in a person’s behavior under the right circumstances. Intolerance, an unwillingness to accept the views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one’s own, is toxic when combined with anger. Anger is dangerous enough as it is on its own, so anger fueled by prejudice is bound to have a catastrophic result. Various types of intolerance are incorporated into our daily lives, sprouting from an individual’s unwillingness to accept conflicting concepts to their own. Some of these types include prejudice of race, religion, social class, and gender. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, many people, including Scout Finch, question their perception of morality as they encounter numerous forms of discrimination and are put to the test when they must consider their judgment towards Maycomb County’s most prejudiced citizens. Racism, a fundamental pillar to discrimination, has become essential to the daily lives of most citizens in Maycomb.
The act of prejudice is one that everyone experiences. Whether it be, a person who is distributing hate, or a person who is receiving hate, everyone has contact with it. Although it is present all over the globe, it is prominent in the United States. Both in the present and the past, endless acts of discrimination have taken place and left a monumental impact on the country. The effect that it leaves can be seen in the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. In this story, sexism, racism, and isolation, are demonstrated in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. As the story progresses, Lee compares these concepts to one another and uses them to make a statement about the problematic nature in America.
One crucial event that took place to battle against racism in Maycomb was Tom Robinson’s trial. While it was a completely racist jury and case, what took place within it proved relevant. This begins with the fact that the trial was even happening. Whether the town realized it or not, this trial was based merely on race, and everyone was aware that there was no true evidence to prove Tom guilty even though no one really mentioned it. So many people in Maycomb attended the trial to see what the outcome would be, as described on page 216, but what they didn’t notice was that racism brought them together. Also, Atticus’ speech regarding the ignorance of this county’s racism truly shed some light on anyone who came to the jury. “ ‘You know the truth, and the
In Harper Lee’s novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, the main character Scout’s journey of maturation is charted as she progresses in her moral education and gains a broader, more adult perspective of the world around her. Scout learns the vital need for utilising tolerance, compassion and empathy when dealing with others, no matter an individual’s reputation or the circumstance. She is also exposed to the terrible injustice and racial prejudice that overcomes Maycomb’s community, and sees how this outright bigotry has severe consequences. Atticus also teaches Scout the meaning of true courage, in both a physical and a moral sense, and how true bravery is often not appreciated by the majority. Harper
To Kill A Mockingbird is an important book that has continued to teach people about race and prejudice for over 50 years. Harper Lee’s message is the harsh reality of how prejudice is built into society and is one of the most important messages of the 20th and 21st centuries. This book teaches us to stand up to prejudice and spread more love. It teaches us to look at things from another person's point of view and to be accepting of those who are different from us. Even to this day we face issues involving prejudice such as police brutality, the achievement gap, homophobia, and equal
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee and was published in 1960. This novel is included in various curriculums to enable students to take this well-written novel to identify the themes and messages and be educated from their literature. Prejudice is defined as a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. The different forms of prejudice that will be analysed are racial, class and social, thus, leads to the citizens of Maycomb to marginalises characters and treat them as an insignificant. It is evident that many characters in this novel suffer from different types of prejudice, which creates a sense of marginalisation. Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell and Arthur Radley are the important, main
Prejudice is one of the world’s greatest struggles. It does not only hold society back, but is harmful to the people who do good .In Harper Lee’s book To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout and Jem live through and witness prejudice and racism in the small town of Maycomb. They see someone wrongly accused of a crime because of his race. Scout and Jem also witness and take part in prejudice against a man no one knows anything about. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee uses characterization to show the negative effects of prejudice and racism.
The mockingbird also extends to relationships between human beings. Some people are gentle and would never harm anyone, like a mockingbird. Yet, there are people who unjustly see past the kindness and simply see what they want to see or what society tell them to see, this leads to issues about race and sex among others. These people then become prejudice towards certain people and may even ‘kill’ the people who are genuinely kind human beings simply because they are different in their opinions, looks or behaviors’, therefore not diseased like everyone else. Lee reveals the ruthless and cruel views, reactions and opinions that the town hold toward Tom and Boo to illustrate the prejudice relationships that occur between
In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the character Scout has the personality trait of being aggressive. Scout also has a character trait of being unladylike. An example of how Scout is aggressive is that after Scout and her brother Jem had gotten there guns for Christmas they were headed to “the Landing”. Before they left their father had said they couldn’t take the guns with, she had already been planning on shooting her cousin. “ He declined to let us take our rifles to the Landing. ( I had already begun to think of shooting Francis)…” (Lee Pg. 106). This is an example of Scout being aggressive because she was thinking about shooting a family member. Shooting someone is considered aggressive behavior because it is purposefully causing
To Kill a Mockingbird is a witty and well-written account of the realities of a “tired old town” (4) where there was “nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with” (4). Purposefully, it comes across not merely an innocently portrayed, yet eye-opening, story of a young girl start to grasp the inequalities of her society. Rather, it is accompanied by recollection of the unfortunate pillars of hate of the places Harper Lee matured in. We now perceive this account as an ‘archaic” and “ancient” recount of some historically frowned upon mindsets in an enthralling atmosphere upon which we pin historical quantities of prejudice, racism and most of all, bigotry. The unfortunate reality is that we look at history in a vacuum and ignore the occurrences of our own times. So although we, like Scout’s teachers teaching about the horrible acts of the Holocaust while being outspokenly racist, are able to analyze social inequalities in other places in time or the world yet refuse to open our eyes to the same prejudice, racism and bigotry today. To instance, when reading To Kill a Mockingbird , we often frown upon citizens for judging “folks” based on their family name and race, although, everyday, some member of our current society, such as police officers and employers, do the same thing and no one bats an eye. Alternatively, the issue which we definitely desperately desire to avoid, racism, is explicitly tackled in To Kill a Mockingbird to the point of viral awareness of the problem in
There were 17,250 people dead. This is the amount of people murdered last year in the U.S. alone. Why does this happen? Pure cruelty. There is tight tensions with the U.S. and North Korea that could start a nuclear war and kill most of us. Why is this possible? Cruelty between one another. This is just two examples of the cruelty in our world today and for the passed hundreds of years. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird cruelty plays a big part in the problems that go on in this small town in Alabama. I think if cruelty was eliminated Tom Robinson wouldn’t be dead, Boo Radley wouldn’t hide, and the whole view on equality between blacks and whites would change.
In The Odyssey by Homer, many characters feel prejudiced toward others. Many of these characters have opinions solely based on rumor. Such characters are influenced by many factors,, but all of them lead to improper judgement. In the same context, many characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird also possess such prejudiced thoughts. Through her use of the characters within Maycomb, in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird; Harper Lee shows how injustice and prejudice between African American and white people was impossible to beat at this point in history, however some characters attempt to fight it anyways.
Michael Crichton defines prejudice as “opinion in the absence of evidence”. This theme is embodied in Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird and brims throughout the course of the story. Harper Lee exemplifies prejudice by using the juxtaposition of the unbiased man, Atticus Finch and his disparaging sister, Alexandra. Atticus’s quote “you never really understand a person until you consider things from from his point of view-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” relates to the quote by Michael Crichton because they both illustrate the theme that you cannot judge a book by its cover.(30)
In Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee uses Scout and Jem to suggest that discrimination and prejudice mindsets force to choose a herd mentality or to choose individuality.
In Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, one of the most prominent themes used in the novel is the action of intolerance and the affect it has on all people. The theme of intolerance is fully explored in the case of Tom Robinson and the underlying racism shown in the treatment of him. Intolerance is met by all three main characters, Scout, Atticus and Jem but is experience by many of the other supporting characters. There was no one kind of intolerant person; they all came from different background, which is testimony to the point of the book ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of views.’ This quote shows that you have no idea why a person does what they do until you experience things from their
It is commonly acknowledged that Literature is the reflection of the society. It is indeed true that literature reflects the attitude and perception of the society where it is written. Literature mirrors the vices of the society with an intention to make the society realize its mistakes and make amendments. The vast literature, produced from time to time, bears evidence to the fact that man is prone to discrimination. Treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their sexuality, skin, and class has, been core theme of the Harper lee’s master piece To Kill a Mocking Bird. The novel is told from Scout’s perspective; through Scout, we witness the social construction of race, class, and gender. The novel continues to be taught in classrooms due to its illustration