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Examples Of Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird Theme The southern United States in 1930’s was filled with segregation, racism, and prejudice. This brings back to mind what a wise man once said “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live” (Adolf Hitler). Today’s society is not pleased with the idea of hate against specific groups of people. However, everyone judges someone solely on their appearance every once in awhile. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, focuses on these judgements and points them out to everyone in an exaggerated way. The main theme of To Kill A Mockingbird is about how people are quick to judge others because of their appearance. While this isn’t necessarily …show more content…

An example would be when Calpurnia decided to to take the children to her church, a black church. Lula, a black woman that attended to that colored church, asked Calpurnia “I wants to know why you bringin’ white chillun to nigger church” (Lee 158). Lula criticized Calpurnia just for the fact that she brought white children to the colored church. Even though slavery had already ended, tensions were still really high between whites and blacks. Though this didn't really affect any characters in a major way, it does serve to show how divided most of the U.S. population was at that point in time. Racism is also an issue which divided the most of the U.S. population, and it is shown multiple times throughout the book. Racism is shown when the church priest asks for a collection to help Helen, as no one will hire her. Scout says “Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d be glad to hire Helen…” (Lee 164). Tom Robinson was accused of rape by Bob Ewell, the town’s drunk, and at her young age, Scout does not understand why anyone would believe Bob’s word over Tom’s. Even though Helen’s treatment by other people can be viewed as a bad thing, it is not. People didn’t know if Tom had or had not raped the girl, so keeping their distance away from the Robinson family wasn’t such a bad

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