'Cry about the simple hell people give other people'. Discuss with reference to To kill a mockingbird and comment on whether it's a pessimistic novel

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‘Cry about the simple hell people give other people’. Discuss with reference to To kill a mockingbird and comment on whether it’s a pessimistic novel

In to kill a mockingbird, we see all kinds of hell people give each other as said by the character Dolphus Raymond, and how innocent people suffer in different ways as a result.

There is the hell of family life, Dill never had a father, ‘I haven’t got one’ and his mother once remarried didn’t want him around. So ‘he just gets passed around from relatives to relatives and Miss Rachel keeps him every summer’. Unlike Scout and Jem, he has never felt the love and security a child ought to feel. He ran away from his step parents because ‘they just weren’t interested’ in him. As a result he seeks love elsewhere, ‘scout let get us a baby’, and feels the need to make up stories to cover up his insecurity, ‘Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard’.

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There is also Boo Radley who is shut behind the ‘closed doors’ of the Radley’s house and ‘kept out of sight’ by his abusive parents. When he could have had a chance of normal life, and could have attended ‘the industrial school and received the best secondary education to be had in the state’. But Mr. Radley took this opportunity away from him due to his prejudice; he didn’t want his son to be associated with people like the Cunninghams who were thought to be below their social status.

Social divisions played a big part in the ‘hell’ ...

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