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To Kill A Mockingbird Dystopian Essay

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines dystopia as “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.” The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a sad novel with mystery and excitement. There is prejudice against black people, and little seems to be right. One may wonder if the book meets the standards of a dystopian novel. The book overall does not meet the qualifications of a dystopian novel for many reasons. To start, the first reason that To Kill a Mockingbird is not a dystopian novel is its setting. A dystopian novel usually has a futuristic science fiction setting. The novel is set in the “tired old town” of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s (Lee 5). There are no advanced technological advancements; it is a plain simple town. Macomb, while it is fictional, is very realistic. To Kill a Mockingbird does not match the setting of a typical dystopian novel like Fahrenheit 451 and Hunger Games. Both of those books fit the cookie cutter dystopian book perfectly as far as the setting of each novel goes. …show more content…

The protagonist realizes there is something fundamentally wrong with society and tries to fix it. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird the protagonist is Scout. At the end of the book she realizes that awful prejudice society had against black people; however, she in no way tries to fix it. In dystopian novels such as Divergent the main character realizes that there is something radically wrong with their society, such as division of people. The protagonist, Tris, wants to repair society. There is a fundamental injustice in the society in To Kill a Mockingbird of segregation. Scout being a young girl can have little effect on the views of the people around her and she does nothing

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