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Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird Analysis

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Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird takes us back to the 1930’s during the cruel Great Depression. Throughout the story a reader will be exposed to a world full of extremists in small town of Maycomb Alabama. Alabama is a place where everybody knows everybody’s business, and where discrimination permeates the town. The discrimination varies in this book from racial issues, to gender inequality, and people being judged because they are shut-ins that know one really knows. Discrimination was a problem and still is a problem, but the novel of To Kill a Mockingbird explores upon the different issues with discrimination. “Atticus said to Jem one day, ‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit'em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee pg 103). In the story, Atticus Finch, the father of Scout(the main character) and Jem Finch (Scout’s brother), is a lawyer and in the beginning of the story he takes a case defending a black man, named Tom Robinson in a rape trial. A little later in the chapter Miss Maudie Atkinson, the Finch’s close friend and neighbor explains, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee pg 103). People see Tom as a bluejay because of his color and how he is an outsider from the rest of the town, while he truly may be a Mockingjay and he might just make beautiful music for us to listen to. Later in the book a group of people go to try and kill Tom Robinson before the trial even starts just because he is black makes them think he raped someone and they won’t even listen to his defence. This shows how much hatred he is given for someone who can very well be innocent.

Another target of racial prejudice is, the Finch’s cook Calpurnia is black as well. Calpurnia is more than just a cook to the Finch’s she is a mother figure to both Scout and Jem, since they lost their mother so early on in life, Calpurnia is always there for the kids. Although Calpurnia is practically family, Atticus’s sister, Aunt

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