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The Historical Events Found in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Decent Essays

The use of events in novels from history is not uncommon. Harper Lee does this in her historical fiction novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. The setting of the book is the 1930s, because this was an important decade of change for America. Harper Lee utilized cultural parallels between important historical events and ideas in To Kill A Mockingbird to show the hardships of the 1930s that influenced corruption of the human mindset. One of the largest, and most crippling events of the 1930s was the Great Depression. Preceded by a decade of wealth and a carefree attitude, the crash of the economy came as a shock to everyone involved. In the article, “Standards Focus: Historical Context, The Great Depression”, the author points out that “People’s …show more content…

The 1930s was the beginning of an extremely unethical era, which led to the spread of corrupt ideas and principles through the nation. This is shown in the article, “Standards Focus: Historical Context, Based on True Stories”. As the author is telling of the events that occurred during The Scottsboro Trials, it is mentioned that out of the nine black men accused of rape, eight “were given death sentences, despite the fact that the defense attorney pointed out that one of the men was blind, the other too elderly and crippled to commit the crime, another underage, and that they were not even in the same rail car.” (Secondary Solutions). The verdict that the men were guilty was made because with the rough life people were living, they were willing to lie to keep themselves protected, and those who believed this act was wrong were not strong enough to protest. This is a parallel to To Kill A Mockingbird, because despite obvious evidence that Tom Robinson is innocent, he is still determined to be guilty. In the trial in Lee’s novel, the victim was hurt mainly on their right side. It is said that “He [Tom Robinson] rose to his feet and stood with his right hand on the back of his chair. He looked oddly off balance, but it was not from the way he was standing. His left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right, and hung dead at his side. It ended in a small shriveled hand, and from as far away as the balcony

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