Prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Essay

One character to experience prejudice is Arthur “Boo” Radley. Jem and Scout have no clue What Boo looks like or how he acts, yet they describe him like,”Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall...he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained…”(Lee,16). They have no idea what kind of person he is or what he looks like. But Jem and Scout still describe him

Everyone in Maycomb believes that the Radleys are dangerous and no one dares to really talk to them. They don’t follow the unwritten social rules that everyone else follows, and that is weird and mysterious to people. The community is mostly suspicious of Arthur Radley, also known as Boo Radley. People believe he is hostile because when he was a teen, he got in with the wrong crow and was arrested. Fifteen years later, he had another incident.

Boo Radley faces prejudice against society since many people create rumors about Boo him. A rumor said about Boo is, “People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows… Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work” (Lee, 10). Prejudice is shown through Boo Radley against Maycomb since they want to create a reason to hold onto about Boo’s actions for staying indoors. Boo Radley is similar to a mockingbird because all he does is give to Jem and Scout.

The prejudice seen in the fictional novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee corresponds with the real narrow-mindedness during this time period. A fair trial would be unlikely during this time period between a white and a black man. Tom Robinson was presumed guilty because of his race.

People aren’t always what we think they are and yet we still expect people to be the stereotypes society runs off of. Maycomb too suffers from this “usual disease” especially with regard to Boo Radley. Everyone in Maycomb County makes fun of Boo, Arthur Radley, without even knowing him: “Boo was about six and a half feet tall […]; he dined on raw squirrels...” (13). This quote explains one of the many urban myths Maycomb and the children have built around Boo.

at all! If a woman wants to be on a jury and meets all the

Prejudice and discrimination is looked down upon, yet people still continue to be judgmental and have preconceived assumptions about others. It is a common thing that still happens in today’s society. To be particular, racial discrimination is one example of prejudice and is based solely on the color of one’s skin. In the story To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson is a caring individual who tries his hardest to treat everyone he meets with appreciation and respect. However, he is African American, which influences him and the other characters' lives in different ways. All he wants to do is help out another character, Mayella, which inevitably costs him his life in the end. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the character of Tom Robinson to illustrate the fact that innocent people are sometimes victimized to a racist society.

Most Maycomb citizens, including Scout in the beginning, think that Boo Radley is a lunatic that nobody wants to mess with. As the story progresses and Scout learns about Mr. Dolphus Raymond and Tom Robinson, she starts to see why Boo wants to be a recluse. He wants to escape from the evil and discrimination in Maycomb. Towards the climax of Boo’s story, Scout starts to see Boo as an actual human, not just as a rumor from Miss Stephanie Crawford, the neighborhood scold. She sees him as a living human being and cares for him, unlike most Maycomb inhabitants. In the end, Scout realizes that “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough” (374). One night, she drowsily remarks about the character in The Gray Ghost “Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things…Atticus, he was real nice…” (376). This is symbolic of Boo Radley because he is rumored for things he had never done, but when Scout finally meets Boo as a person, she finally realizes that all those accusations are lies and one must respect others as individuals.

Prejudices are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

The characters in, To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, often use prejudice against people of controversial issues. Many of the townspeople of Maycomb use prejudice on the families who are on the less wealthy end of the spectrum. Issues are still displayed because of the racial prejudice used against African Americans and those of other races. Lastly, gender is a clear issue in Maycomb because of women’s and girl’s rights and lack of respect towards them because they are female. All of the types of prejudice show that Maycomb has many problems all throughout the town between other families and townspeople.

Life is like a thrill ride; one never knows what will be in store for them. Many characters in the story To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee feel the same way about life, having experienced many surprising and unexpected turns of events. This story is about a sleepy southern town filled with prejudice, and a lawyer’s quest, along with his children Scout and Jem, to take steps in ridding the town of its prejudiced attitude. Despite being a white man, a lawyer named Atticus, defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman. However, everything does not go as was hoped, and the mindset of the society overpowered Atticus’s fair-minded argument. From this emerges a theme regarding the bigotry and bias overwhelming Maycomb: A

what a bad father he is and why his family have been given a bad name.

“To Kill a Mocking Bird” is a novel which was written by Harper Lee. In my essay I will discuss how Harper Lee explores the theme of prejudice by looking at the writing techniques and how they affect people.

Lastly, prejudice is shown in To Kill a Mockingbird by social or economic status. The Cunninghams cannot pay people back in money for services or things they have been given. They pay people back by goods that they already have. People know that it’s mean to make fun of them for paying people back that way, just because of their status. Another example is that Aunt Alexandra will not let Scout play with Walter Cunningham. She says to Scout, “Because-he-is-trash, that’s why you can’t play with him,” (Lee 256). This shows that even the kids are being taught to stay within their own class, even if it is something as simple as playing with another kid. Also, the Ewells are the trash of the town, and everybody knows it. The whole town just turns and eye to them and pretends like they are not there, because they live behind the dump and are the trash of their society. So, that shows that prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird is shown by social and economical status.

(Lee, page 65) Atticus shows his belief and perspectives as a constant throughout the work of To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus always behaves gentlemanly and treats everyone the same no matter their religion, colour, or background. The idea of treating everyone the same was extremely uncommon in Alabama in the early 1930’s, blacks were treated lower than anyone else. The Radley house has a stigma in Maycomb, Alabama because the family that lives there are foot-washing Baptists and never go outside, so many families in the county of Maycomb believe they are weird, lessors of society. At the young age of 7, Scout, and her brother, Jem, try to get the strange man, Boo Radley, to come out of his house, by leaving a note on the back window sill with a fishing pole. Atticus Finch believes that every member of society should be left to their ways, so when he catches his children trying to get a man out of his house, who does not want to because of Boo’s belief system, Atticus scolds them for not seeing how this will affect Boo in his religion. By doing this, Atticus shows his