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Causes Of Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

Decent Essays

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is a history fiction novel. The novel explains in depth life growing up in the south, during the 1930s. This novel is set in a fictional town in Alabama, named Maycomb County. Throughout the story the different customs and ways if life are displayed. Lee who grew up in the south during these times wanted to show how people were affected by the different viewpoints of the residents in Maycomb. To Kill A Mockingbird is a book filled with enmity, one of the main reasons is racial prejudice, with underlying causes such as class prejudice and innocence. The racial tension in Maycomb County is very evident throughout the novel. Southern cities during the 1930s- 1970s contained a lot of racial prejudice. Maycomb County is a prime example, the African Americans in the novel were treated poorly. The Caucasian residents treated them as if they were the very scum of the earth. The black folk in the town was at the bottom of the social hierarchy, in many different ways. It was considered socially unacceptable for the whites in the town to associate with the blacks. Dolphus Raymond a resident of Maycomb, broke this ‘‘social law’’. Because of his actions Raymond was shunned by most of the white population in Maycomb County. Raymond not only associated with the coloreds, but also had children by and married a women of color. Tom Robison’s case is also another pivotal example of the racism in Maycomb County. Tom Robison was falsely convicted of

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