To Kill A Mockingbird: Breaking Social Norm

On August 9, 2014,a young man by the name of Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. It is little known why the shooting occurred, but the boy was unarmed.This could be one of many cases of modern day racism and segregation. In 1930, “even after the abolishment of slavery in 1865, blacks were still almost powerless(BBC 2)”.Blacks were heavily segregated and had almost no rights.Many cases of segregation in the 1930s caused a lot of current day racial tension in the united states.

Social inequality based entirely on race affects people who don’t deserve it. To Kill a Mockingbird original publication was in 1960, it is a classic novel written by Harper Lee, the book is set in 1933 to 1935. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama and follows two years in the life of 7-year old Scout Finch, her brother Jem, and their father Atticus, an attorney who hopelessly strives to prove the innocence of a black man accused of rape. The book also talks about Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbour who saves Scout and her brother Jem from being killed. The definition of social and legal codes are social codes made up of rules and standards, and a legal system is a code of laws made by a state or nation. Throughout the book, social and legal codes are exploited by people to help maintain their social status. In Maycomb County, social and legal laws harm black people to protect white people, such as Atticus Finch, Bob Ewell, and Tom Robinson.

John F. Kennedy once said, “conformity is jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” I happen to think this quote is very true, because if no one ever had a different opinion, then would anything ever change? Or would it all stay the same? Forever? The idea of conformity can be seen as a good, or a bad thing. In many cases it is a bad thing, as one idea that is wrong is the only one that people think is right. This can specifically be seen in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus, one of the main characters, needs to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. In his town of Maycomb most of the people think of black people as nothing. Although the whole town would be against him if he did it, Atticus knows that it is the right

Society influenced every character in To Kill a Mockingbird in many more ways than one. People in the everyday world feel the stress and pressure of the world to conform to its standards, even if those standards aren’t who the people see themselves as being. Harper Lee and her protagonist, Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird truly capture how, in such a short time, society can pressure playful girls into becoming the standard southern bell or rowdy boys into men. In the days of this setting, people weren't always given a choice or option of who they wanted to be. Too often in that time children were pressured to be exactly how they were expected to be in society. Men and women traded the flow of children's creativity for conformity instead.

The criticism brought on by social roles negatively impacts one’s views on themselves and their actions. Maycomb’s strict social roles have lowered somes self esteem and has trapped people in a certain personality or financial stance. These social roles can get in a person’s head and change their views and actions in result. An example of this is shown at the school where Scout explains to Miss Caroline about the Ewells, ” He’s one of the Ewell’s...They come the first day every year and then they leave… You’re supposed to mark ‘em absent the rest of the year”(27). The Ewells have always left the first day of school because that’s who they are and who they will always be, but how are the children supposed to better themselves if this social role has been placed on them since birth. This normal behavior of the Ewells restricts the

Throughout Harper Lee’s book, To Kill A Mockingbird, many political and social issues occur. One major political issue in this book is unequal justice in the judicial system, or racial discrimination. Socially, poverty, child abuse, and gender discrimination are all issues present throughout the book. Although some of these occurrences may be minor, they all significantly impact the outcome of the book.

Throughout the film To Kill a Mockingbird, there are many themes and important sociological concepts. Three sociological concepts that will be applied to the film are racism, prejudice, and social stratification. Racism can be defined as the attribution of characteristics of superiority or inferiority to a population sharing certain physically inherited characteristics (Giddens, Dumeier, Appelbaum, and Carr 2014). Any belief or attitude that favors one racial group over another is an example of racism (Dykstra-Crookshanks, 2015). Racism is a branch term of prejudice that looks at the variety of distinctions between individuals (Giddens et al. 2014).

Social injustice is a huge issue that is depicted in Harper Lee’s novel. Social injustice is seen throughout the world. Where racism and social inequality exist social injustice prevails. Social injustice has a role in society to give an excuse to treat people rudely and poorly. The effects that social injustice has is violence.

The theme that plays the strongest role in creating the setting of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is society. Maycomb County is an old, small town in Alabama during the Great Depression. All of its citizens have lived there, for almost their entire lives. Throughout the years the townspeople create a reputation, some are good and some are bad. Since Maycomb is such a small town they have nothing else to do but gossip. “Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.” because they are expected to be perfect and if they are not, the town will go against them. Another example is Maycomb County created stereotypes. If someone did not fit in with the rest of Maycomb’s citizens they were viewed as odd, even

What society makes people believe and act are based on certain standards they are expected to do. The setting in the novel is set in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression (1930s). Maycomb is an old “tired” town with most of its residents being poor. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee argues that social expectations are valued more than the actual truth/reality.

In the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, racism and social inequality are two central themes. Many different forms of social inequality coexist in the society depicted in the book, as the people of Maycomb are very rigid in their ways. This is because the book takes place in a time at which there was much racism and social inequality. In Maycomb, firstly there is discrimination between rich and poor white people, who do not often interact with each other. There is also racism against blacks by all white people in society, both rich and poor. Black people are denied basic rights and discriminated against in this town. Lastly, there is racism between the lowest classes of the community: poor white people and

The human experience is expressed in different ways from different characters in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. She explains the experience through her characters and explains how the human experience is preternatural and bewildering.

“It takes a village to raise a child”, is an African Proverb. In other words, it can take more than just a child’s nuclear family to make her grow into who she will be as an adult. This lens is true because even though parents and siblings have a major effect on a child, and how they turn out later on in life, society and a child’s surrounding are what really shapes, and makes them who they are. What a child sees when he or she is new to the world, and doesn’t know everything, effects their behavior, and outlook on their life ahead. This lens is illustrated in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by

thing during and following slavery. In the novel, a man named Bob Ewell despises black people and calls out Atticus by saying, “too proud to fight, you nigger lovin bastard?” (Lee, 291). What that quote is saying is how Bob is getting upset with atticus just because he is Tom Robinson's lawyer and Bob Ewell doesn’t like black people. Another example of racism occurs in chapter 11. This happens when the kids are walking by Mrs.Dubose’s home, and she starts yelling out racist comments about Atticus. She yells out to Jem and says, “your father is no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” (Lee, 105) She attacks their father for doing his job, but even more so attacks Jem and Scout by Yelling furiously about their father. These two ways are clearly shown in To Kill A Mockingbird and there are many other ways throughout the novel.

From reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I learned that racism is very harmful to the people it affects, that it was a huge issue at that time, and that it was considered a part of everyday life in the South. I also learned that there is more to a person than meets the eye and you will never know a person’s entire story, so you should always be kind and compassionate to them.