In To Kill a Mockingbird, what do you learn about the town itself and the way of life of its inhabitants in this novel?

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In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee tells the story of children growing up in a southern town, but also creates a vivid picture of the town itself and its inhabitants. What do you learn about the town itself and the way of life of its inhabitants in this novel?

Maycomb is in Albama in the southern United States. "Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it." This is a description of Maycomb given by Scout in the first chapter of the novel. Later Scout goes on to say "There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with." This suggests that Maycomb is an old town that has been hit hard by the depression. Another suggestion of this is "The Cunningham's are country folks, farmers and the crash hit them the hardest." This also suggests that a lot of farming is done in the area and one the reasons why the crash hit the area so badly. The depression was mainly caused by the Wall Street stock market crash in 1929. It was also caused by US producers over producing their products this led to high unemployment rates, poverty and near starvation for millions of people. There was too much supply and not enough demand world-wide. US farmers couldn’t afford to buy because they couldn’t sell their own produce. This is one of the main reasons why the southern states of the US were hit so hard by it. All this meant that the standard of living in the US rapidly declined with people only managing to buy the bare essentials.

        Throughout the novel points are made to show that the opinions of the residents of Maycomb towards black people haven't changed much since the days of slavery. Poor white people were resentful of the newly freed slaves. A lot of people felt that even the richest black man is lower than the poorest, lowest white man -for example Bob Ewell. This is proved in the case between Bob Ewell and Tom Robinson. Even though Bob Ewell is looked down upon because of the way he lives, he still won his case against Tom Robinson, causing Tom to be charged with the rape of Mayella Ewell, when he is obviously innocent. People are shocked when people says he helped Mayella Ewell because he felt sorry for her. Many people were shocked with this because they felt that it wasn’t right for him to feel sorry for her as she was white and he was black.

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        In Maycomb everybody is judged by what family he or she are from. Examples of this are the Cunningham's - everyone knew about them and that they had no money but wouldn't take something they couldn’t pay back. In chapter 2 Miss Caroline offers to lend lunch money to Walter Cunningham but he refuses. Miss Caroline wouldn’t accept this Scout is forced to explain “Walter is one of the Cunninghams’, Miss Caroline” and then further explains “You’ll get to know all the country folks after a while. The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back- no church baskets and ...

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