preview

To Kill a Mockingbird Reflection

Decent Essays

To Kill a Mockingbird Reflection

Written in the late 1950s to early 1960s, To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways reflects the state of its society. The Civil Rights Movement was occurring at the time, a fight for human freedom, extending the rights of full citizenship to individuals regardless of race, sex, or creed and the slowly emerging concept of equal rights for all. Although set in the 1930s, it has come to my attention that the book strongly mirrors it¡¯s context and was greatly influenced by the values and beliefs of the people at the time.

To Kill a Mockingbird in my opinion doesn¡¯t represent a true 1930s. It contains many main characters such as Calpurnia and Atticus who have morals and personalities that I felt out-step …show more content…

This can be seen through the likeness of Tom Robinson¡¯s trial and the Mississippi Burning trails. In both these cases I noted that a white person¡¯s word has prevailed over a black man¡¯s based on the notion that one race is superior than the other. This claim of ¡®superiority¡¯ I think is more or less a cover up for ignorance, and the fear of mixing with things the white people didn¡¯t understand; the African Americans. Atticus describes this fear in the novel as ¡°Maycomb¡¯s usual disease¡± where ¡°reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up.¡±

¡°Maycomb¡¯s usual disease¡± likens to the reaction of students from the University of Alabama graduate school who reacted with violence that lasted for several days to the acceptance of Autherine Lucy, a female African American into the University in 1956. I suspect that this reaction was based on the resentment and hatred of coloured people, racial prejudice. It was most likely caused by the stereotypes of coloured people at the time, stereotypes that offer the image of a somewhat less human creature that was violent, senseless and resentful. Because of segregation laws and the general ¡®stay in your place and we will in ours¡¯ sentiment of both the white and black communities, the white people don¡¯t really have the opportunity to prove stereotypes wrong and so grow up with a warped impression of the other race, they cannot be

Get Access