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Examples Of Cruelty In To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that is a wonderful exploration of racism and brutality in primarily white, southern towns. The main character, Scout Finch, is a little girl who doesn’t quite understand everything she sees and hears, creating an effect where the reader recognizes what’s happening while Scout isn’t always aware of the severity of the situation. Scout’s father, Atticus, is a lawyer representing an African American man named Tom Robinson for supposedly raping a white woman. During the trial, it becomes clear that that the white woman and her family are lying, but Tom is still convicted. This is the climax of the novel and it’s the most focused-upon act of cruelty throughout the book. To Kill a Mockingbird uses cruelty to show readers how harshly African Americans were treated during the early 1930s and does so by using an innocent onlooker to provide a childlike and plain view on racism, revealing throughout the book that people have no limits on how cruel they can be. …show more content…

It is made clear in Tom’s trial that no matter what his defense is, the white people’s word is always going to rule. Atticus even acknowledges this before the trial when he says, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win” (87). Racism against African Americans is so potent in the small town of Maycomb that even the lowliest white folk’s opinions are considered truthful over a respectable African American man. Scout, since she’s not prejudiced, can clearly see that Mayella and her father are lying in court, but it doesn’t end up mattering, no matter the amount of incriminating evidence Atticus presents in Tom’s

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