Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Mayella had a great amount of power in the courtroom during the trial of Tom Robinson. This completely classless manipulative woman used the disadvantages she was dealt in life to her benefit. She made advances toward this black man, when he did not reciprocate those feelings she accused him of rape. He is convicted and sent to prison because of her. Through this, she also gains power that removes her from her father’s sexual abuse. He does not want her because of the relations with a

In order to understand if someone is good or evil, one must first understand what exactly are good and evil?

“Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a profound tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there” ~ Scott Peck. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird abounds with the injustice produced by social, gender, and racial prejudice. The setting of the book takes place in the 1930s, where racism is a big deal in society. In the novel Harper Lee uses a mockingbird as an analogy to the characters. The Mockingbird is a symbol for Three Characters in the book, Atticus Finch, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley. The people of Maycomb only know Boo Radley and Tom Robinson by what others say about them. These Characters are then characterized by other people 's viewpoints. In the novel there are many themes that are adjacent to our lives, the one that is found in To Kill A Mockingbird is Human Conflict comes from the inability for one to understand another. “ You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (39)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has been banned and/or challenged over thirty times since its publication in 1960. Effectively preventing many students from enjoying the novel and benefitting from its message. To ignore racism is no different than denying it ever existed. To Kill a Mockingbird is appropriate for mature adolescence/students and should not be banned from schools. Despite its sexual related content, or profanity, a valuable lesson remains that should be taught to students.

“Everybody sees what you appear to be ... few people know who you really are.” This saying illustrates that if you appear one way, no one can see who you really are inside. When someone appears one way, you do not really get to know them but when they truly become themselves you can really see who they are and not just who they appear to be. However, they may only reveal their true selves to some people and keep acting like a different person to everyone else, or keep everything to themselves and do not show anyone their true self. Dolphus Raymond, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, all show themselves in a different way. Dolphus reveals himself to Scout and Dill during the trial at the court.

During Civil War period, a pro¬slavery mob chained Francis McIntosh to a locust tree, burnt him fatality in 1837. There are a lot of abolitionists, like Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who lost their lives when criticizing lynching. Elijah Parish Lovejoy showed both physical and moral courage fighting against inequality. The real courage of abolitionists during that time was gaining equal opportunities for African-¬Americans, and be treated the same as white people no matter the consequences. Even after a century, there is no slavery anymore, there is still racism happening. In Harper Lee’s book To Kill a Mockingbird, she shows the real meaning of courage fighting for equal rights in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression.

The case of Tom Robinson was a case on whether he would be guilty for rape or not. Tom Robinson had the defendant, Atticus, with their opponents, the Ewells. Throughout the case you are able to see many different cases where Atticus made it obvious that Tom did nothing wrong and it would have been obvious that Bob Ewell would have been a likely suspect to commit the crime of rape against her daughter, Mayella. The trial showed that the justice system has flaws and doesn’t represent justice, people only make choices based on their racist views.

To Kill A MockingBird Black or White “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view….” Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. In the 1930’s, things were tough because race was a major influence in America. “Rowena: ‘Eloise needs more love than just her grandfather can give her.’

Harper Lee argues in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, that the moral obligations of a court are thrown aside in favor of the law that lies in the minds of men. She describes her characters in such a manner that alludes to their inner thoughts. Through practiced repetition, the citizens of Maycomb force the existence of the social inequality that is white supremacy. Whether by following lead or by ignoring the problem altogether, it is the people alone who allow injustices to occur. In a public appeal for an era of tolerance, Harper Lee attacks Southern racism through Scout Finch's narration of her father's failure to correct a corrupt legal system dominated by prejudiced citizens seeking to rule the law by their own hands.

Throughout history, philosophers have debated the nature of man as good or evil, and the texts To Kill a Mockingbird, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), and Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried all detail this philosophical debate. It is argued that man is inherently of one moral fiber or another, predispositioned towards one nature or another. However, this argument is shallow and does not address what forms evil in the first place. As shown in To Kill a Mockingbird, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), and The Things They Carried, man is not born a monster. The surrounding

Nietzsche remarks on how different the concepts of “evil” and “bad” are, in spite of both being considered the opposite of “good.” He explains this difference by explaining that there are two very different concepts of “good” at work: The noble man’s “good” is precisely what the man of ressentiment calls “evil” (Alderman).

In the article “The Concept of Evil”, Todd Calder writes “It seems that we cannot capture the moral significance of these actions and their perpetrators by calling them ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or even ‘very very wrong’ or ‘very very bad.’ We need the concept of evil.” In the same article, Calder writes, “The problem of evil is the problem of accounting for evil in a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. It seems that if the creator has these attributes, there would be no evil in the world. But there is evil in the world.

The text type of To Kill a Mockingbird is a fiction novel which deals with the racism the author observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee, who wrote her novel in a retrospective point of view. There were numerous aspects of historical, personal, cultural and social context in To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee was born on the 28th of April, 1926, in Monroeville Alabama. Monroeville was a close-knit community that has many similarities with Maycomb, which is the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s father was a prominent lawyer, whom she drew inspiration for the protagonists father, Atticus Finch. Among Lee’s childhood friends was Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration to the character Dill. These personal details help portray Harper Lee’s own childhood home, where racism and segregation was highly evident. Another example of context which helped shape To Kill a Mockingbird were the events that occurred during Harper Lee’s childhood. In 1931, when Harper Lee was five years old, nine African-American men were accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama. After a series of lengthy, highly publicised, and often bitter trials, five of the nine men were sentenced to long term imprisonment. Many prominent lawyers and various members of the general public saw the sentences as spurious and believed that it was motivated by racial prejudice.

What is good? What is evil? How do they relate to one another? Where did they come from? These are questions nearly everyone has considered at some point in their lifetime. Humans use the terms “good” and “evil” for many things. For instance, one might say “Oh john, how good of you to come by.” Or perhaps you have heard “mom, this pie is very good!” Children will often express the way their day went simply by stating that it was a “good day,” while funeral directors frequently declare that the deceased person was a “good man.” On the contrary, the term “evil” is one of the top phrases used to describe bad guys. But what are good and evil?

So, what is evil?  Is it Hitler's near annihilation of the Jewish people during World War II or the senseless massacre at Ti'enneman Square on mainland China?  Again we turn to Webster's dictionary, which states evil as causing distress or harm, a source of sorrow, and the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrongdoing. (Merriam-Webster)   Evil would be any intention to cause an undesirable effect upon one's self or on another person.  So by saying that the intentions of a person are not to cause good we automatically assume that they are out to cause evil.