Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

We live in a society where African Americans used to be treated with no respect. What if you had to experience the same things that they dealt with? They faced racial discrimination and injustice in court. Mostly in the Jim Crow South, certain groups of white people during this time made it impossible for African Americans to receive justice. Even if they were innocent, blacks could be brutally punished and were subjugated by violence. In court whites would generally win even if they did not have any strong evidence to support their arguments. Especially in the south, during the 1930s, African Americans had little value and basically no legal status in society. They were meant to be treated like animals and, generally, many people believed that whites were always superior to blacks.

An award winning book and classic for modern American literature implies the remarkable novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Nelle Harper Lee. The narrator and main character of this book is Jean Louise, more commonly known as Scout Finch. This book is set in the slow-paced town of Maycomb where the community is small, but the struggles many. In this small town, social norms play a big role in everyday life. The social “laws” are found to be stronger and more enforced than the real law. Citizens of this southern community must stay in their class or endure suffering as an outcast. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, specific circumstances in the 1930s South impacts the theme of Small Town Life. The study of eugenics and stereotypes impacts the identity of the citizens of Maycomb on a daily basis and affects the social norms for different people.

“‘...Mockingbirds… don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us [anyone and everyone in Maycomb]. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird…’” (Lee 119). In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 1961 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells the story of a young girl by the name of Jean Louise (Scout) Finch and her older brother Jeremy Atticus (Jem) Finch, and what their lives were like growing up in Maycomb, Alabama during 1933-35. Scout and her brother Jem are both children of the morally passionate lawyer, Atticus Finch, and both are exposed to the same experiences that shape their sense of right and wrong. Yet Scout and Jem come to dramatically different conclusions about good and evil and the essential nature of humankind.

A poor economy, outdated health care programs, and classism have propelled a majority of Americans into poverty. In a community, groups of people are often disenfranchised through the means of external factors; circumstances they can not control. Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, conveys a powerful message demonstrating how people can become divided and deprived due to issues that affect a community. The message is appealing because the book is set in the 1930s; however, some of the very same issues are taking root in today 's society.

All children go through changes and instances in their life that push them towards the brink of adulthood, especially those living in Maycomb County. The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, elaborates on the lives of the main characters, Jem and Scout Finch, and how they experience profound ordeals that try to open their eyes to the real world around them. In the first part of the book, Jem and Scout are introduced to the reader as representations of innocence. When people are born, they are filled to the brim with innocence, but as they get older, the world withdraws that innocence out of them. Harper Lee illustrates this theory from the start of the story using the lives of the children. Scout maintains a bit of her childhood innocence even after everything she and her brother have to bear, whereas Jem has his eviscerated by each vexing incident. Jem endures critical moments in his life that commence his transition from a child to an adult.

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is set in a small Southern United States community called Maycomb during the Great Depression era. Even though the whole book primarily revolves around Scout and her life of growing up, she also learns about segregation and racism and how it relates to Maycomb’s history. It eventually leads to the trial of Tom Robinson where he is accused of beating up and raping Mayella Ewell. Even though it was clear that Tom Robinson did not do anything wrong, he was convicted by an all white jury simply because he was black. The trial of Tom Robinson and its verdict shows an example of how segregation in the court system prevents fair trials from occurring.

Anne Frank once stated, “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” This guidance can go hand in hand with the theme growing up, when older characters give advice to children or siblings.Growing up is used frequently in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Harper Lee uses the theme growing up in To Kill a Mockingbird to change characters opinion, develop characters through their world, and utilizes prejudice to reveal growing up.

Maycomb may be a small town, but as a result, it’s a racial town as well. Since the town is divided, people see racism everyday. That’s why when it came to Tom Robinson’s case, they chose Atticus to represent Tom. Tom Robinson is a black man who was said to sexually assault Mr. Bob Ewell’s daughter, Mayella, even though Tom was crippled from an accident as a child. “In our courts, when it 's a white man 's word against a black man 's, the white man always wins. They 're ugly, but those are the facts of life…” said Atticus while he was explaining what had happened to

Everyone grows up hearing elders saying how “back in their day”, things were done differently. Although it often makes people roll their eyes when they hear that saying, it tends to be true. Each generation has its own pros and cons, and each time period is unlike the previous one. This is especially true for the 1930s, where discrimination was at its peak since the Civil War, and the majority of the United States was in extreme poverty. This sets the scene for the book, To Kill A Mockingbird, where the young narrator, Scout, tells the events that happen in the small town of Maycomb. The plot of the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, has a more profound effect since it is set in the 1930s.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is based on a time in the south during the 1930 's. This is a time during the Civil Rights Movement and slavery. The story is looked through the eyes of a girl name Scout Finch. She lives with her brother, Jem; her family housekeeper and cook, Calpurnia and father, Atticus. Atticus is a attorney that tries to get a black man freed of being accused of a unfair rape that he is charged with. Boo Radley is one of the "mockingbirds" the book talks about, and he ends up saving Scout and Jem 's lives. There are several way 's the author used Atticus Finch to represent a good person and father. His character shows, you don’t always have to follow the crowd. For instance, he is always a man of his word, and he 's a great father to his two children. Atticus always treats everyone equally. He doesn’t look for color and teaches his children they should not either. Finally, he does what he believes is right, and not always what people expect him to do.

In To Kill A Mockingbird it is a recurring theme for a lack of education to develop into a lack of judgment. This novel, by Harper Lee, includes many lessons taught by Atticus Finch to his children. He taught Scout and Jem, his children, that race and appearance does not affect the quality of a person, you will never understand one’s actions until you see things from their point of view and lastly to look past the evil in everyone. Atticus has great domination over his children and the way they are growing up. Education can help overcome the judgment in a community, but develop one as well.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, was published in 1960 and is read by ninth graders all across the country because of its Pulitzer-Prize-winning writing.  To Kill a Mockingbird parallels Harper Lee’s life in the sense that like the main character, her father was a lawyer and she had a best friend similar to the one of her main characters.  She used this real life experience to tell the fictional story of Scout, a young girl living in the prejudiced community of Maycomb, Alabama.  Scout and her brother, Jem, encounter a young boy, Dill, and quickly befriend him.  They become interested in the suspicious story of Boo Radley and his family.  However, the story’s plot is centered around her father, Atticus, and his case to defend Tom

In her seminal novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee introduces many racial controversies that

d Scout and patted her with a ruler in front of all the students in the class. After that, Jem sympathized with Walter and grinned at him. "Come on home to dinner with us, Walter," said Jem. "We 'd be glad to have you" (Lee 30). Eventually, Scout learned how to respect others and not judge them before she looks at things from the other person 's point of view as Atticus told her, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…. Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it"(Lee 39). In the meantime, since Atticus was a lawyer, he accepted to defend Tom Robinson, who was a black man accused of raping, Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Regardless of what the people in the town thought about Atticus defending a Negro, Atticus and his children endured a great deal of playground and ugliness for the justice. In the end of the trial, the white jury arbitrated that Tom Robinson was guilty regardless of the overwhelming evidence on his innocence. Eventually, Robinson was killed by a gunshot when he tried to escape from the prison.

America was once thought of as the greatest country in the world. Though since the dawn of our country’s time, we’ve been one of the biggest perpatrators of racial and social injustice. In Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”, Lee puts America’s faults on display for everyone to see. There are so many people today who view this novel as old, outdated, and irrelevant to society today; but with issues like the wage gap between men and women, Donald Trump being a real candidate for the presidency, and the Black Lives Matter movement, this novel pertains to our society much more than society probably thinks, and America is far from the end of racial and social injustice.