Prejudice In Today's Society

In The Odyssey by Homer, many characters feel prejudiced toward others. Many of these characters have opinions solely based on rumor. Such characters are influenced by many factors,, but all of them lead to improper judgement. In the same context, many characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird also possess such prejudiced thoughts. Through her use of the characters within Maycomb, in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird; Harper Lee shows how injustice and prejudice between African American and white people was impossible to beat at this point in history, however some characters attempt to fight it anyways.

Prejudice is a typical issue amid the early quarter of the twentieth century. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird this issue is obvious in Maycomb. Boo Radley, Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson are for the most part casualties of prejudice, and each of the three characters are tormented by this. It influences them all in an unexpected way; devastating them and debilitating them from going about as they wish.

(A)Prejudice: a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.(C) The most important piece of information that scout learns from her father is , “‘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”’(39). In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird , Scout learns many lessons on how to deal with racism and prejudice, and how to consider a person...as a normal person. Scout learns to walk in another person's shoes before she judges them. Boo Radley, Atticus Finch, and Tom Robinson are all misperceived by the people of Maycomb, and have more good qualities than meets the eye.

Tom Robinson is a young, disabled Negro who is charged with the rape of Mayella Ewell. He currently has a wife and three children at home and works in the field of one of Maycomb’s residents. He is a respectable, humble, kind person whom was trying to help Mayella because no one else would. His strong sense of manners and good heart are the reasons he helped Mayella with her chores. Atticus knows that Tom is innocent which is why he is defending Tom in court. After Mayella Ewell makes the charge of rape, Tom's verdict comes not from facts, but from the stereotypes that concerned every resident of Maycomb. They did not take the time to know Tom, but feared and hated him unethically. Tom is a representation of a mockingbird in the story because

Throughout the novel, he monitors the children. One day while they were playing a game, Scout tire rolled right in front of the Radley house. While there she, heard laughter coming from inside the house. She thought it was Boo, but she kept it too herself. Later in the novel, it is revealed that the laughter was, in fact, Boo. He also risks his life to save Scout and Jem while they were being attacked by Bob Ewell. Ewell attacked the children while they were on their way to a Halloween pageant. Boo ends up killing Ewell in order to protect the children. This leading up into showing how he is also

Mayella Ewell claimed Tom Robinson beat and raped her. Both of Bob’s and Mayella’s testimonies have many loose holes and have multiple things that don't add up. For example,Tom not being able to use his right arm, but Mayella claimed he got on to her, beat and choked her. “And so, a quiet, humble, respectable negro, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white peoples. The defendant is not guilty. But somebody in this courtroom is...now, gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!...” (Lee 273). This paragraph reveals the theme of racism in the city of Maycomb because Atticus has to re-explain why Tom is innocent. He has to keep telling them that the evidence from the Ewells don't add up, there was no positive medical kit, and Tom's story doesn't add up with the Ewells. It shows racism because it shows how far the people of Maycomb will go to make a black person suffer. It shows how much hate is filled with the whites of Maycomb. Tom Robinson is eventually shot 17 times by a police officer, and leaves behind his wife and three children. The outcome of Tom Robinson is horrible. But it shows how little the

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee and was published in 1960. This novel is included in various curriculums to enable students to take this well-written novel to identify the themes and messages and be educated from their literature. Prejudice is defined as a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. The different forms of prejudice that will be analysed are racial, class and social, thus, leads to the citizens of Maycomb to marginalises characters and treat them as an insignificant. It is evident that many characters in this novel suffer from different types of prejudice, which creates a sense of marginalisation. Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell and Arthur Radley are the important, main

Prejudice is one of the world’s greatest struggles. It does not only hold society back, but is harmful to the people who do good .In Harper Lee’s book To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout and Jem live through and witness prejudice and racism in the small town of Maycomb. They see someone wrongly accused of a crime because of his race. Scout and Jem also witness and take part in prejudice against a man no one knows anything about. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee uses characterization to show the negative effects of prejudice and racism.

Michael Crichton defines prejudice as “opinion in the absence of evidence”. This theme is embodied in Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird and brims throughout the course of the story. Harper Lee exemplifies prejudice by using the juxtaposition of the unbiased man, Atticus Finch and his disparaging sister, Alexandra. Atticus’s quote “you never really understand a person until you consider things from from his point of view-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” relates to the quote by Michael Crichton because they both illustrate the theme that you cannot judge a book by its cover.(30)

The act of prejudice is one that everyone experiences. Whether it be, a person who is distributing hate, or a person who is receiving hate, everyone has contact with it. Although it is present all over the globe, it is prominent in the United States. Both in the present and the past, endless acts of discrimination have taken place and left a monumental impact on the country. The effect that it leaves can be seen in the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. In this story, sexism, racism, and isolation, are demonstrated in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. As the story progresses, Lee compares these concepts to one another and uses them to make a statement about the problematic nature in America.

Prejudice has been apart of human beings since the beginning of time. People hold disparaging views towards other groups because of sex, race, color and religious beliefs.In today’s society, one of the ongoing problems is, too many men and women are prejudice. Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, browbeats the future and leaves the present baffling. No one is born prejudice, therefore it is taught. In the popular novel based on a true story “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, prejudice is also one of the ongoing problems.

“Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart.”(Marguerite Gardiner Blessington). Over the years, countless people have fallen in to the dark abyss of prejudice because they merely following the trend of society. Prejudice is exactly what it sounds like; its root words are firmly planted. Prejudice may be defined as the act of pre judging someone because of their race, religion, sex, ethnic background, or can be based solely on how they look. Prejudice is a flaw in society many have dealt with for centuries, but one race has suffered in the United States of America where “all men are equal”, more than any other race in history. If all men are created equal, how could we treat people of a different color so unjustly? It is a travesty that cannot be forgotten and that can not, must not, and shall not be repeated. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee states the truth behind a world with closed minds. She put the world into perspective through her commentary that is still relevant today. Through her writing, we see the compassion, sympathy, and tolerance, or the lack thereof, from all perspectives: a father, a racist man, a confused woman, children, negroes, and a dear lawyer named Atticus Finch.

The Maycomb jury accused Tom Robinson guilty of rape of Mayella Ewell, not because they truly thought he was guilty; he was wrongfully convicted because of our town’s long time “honor code” of our society. Our “honor code” is nothing but a meaningless, unbroken rule saying that all whites are infallible, while all negroes are immoral and can’t be trusted around anyone. If a white person were to break this “code”, that person would be considered an outcast in our town. Of course, as I’ve said before, some whites and negroes are immoral and can’t be trusted around anyone. Take the Ewells, for example. Maycomb despises them, and barely keeps them isolated from the rest of town. They represent Maycomb’s worst side, but their word is still taken over a black man’s word, simply because they’re white. None of the jury members wanted to risk their own reputations and be

“All men are created equal”, one of the most ignored statements that our founding fathers wrote in the Constitution. People exercise prejudice everywhere in the U.S. Prejudice is a topic that is constantly revisited in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Her novel focuses on Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch, living her life in the 1930s of rural Maycomb, Alabama. Scout witnesses the injustice and prejudice against many people, not only Negroes. The heat of prejudice rises when Atticus decides to defend Tom Robinson, a black who is going under trial for allegedly raping a white girl. Despite the clear evidence that Robinson is innocent,