Maycomb's Social Classes

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Banu Thuraisingam

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20/10/2003

Maycomb's Social Classes

To Kill a Mocking Bird is set in a small Southern town in Alabama called Maycomb. The narrator, Scout Finch introduces the readers to the county of Maycomb by, "Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it... Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum" (pg 5). She describes it as a sleepy town in the South and puts forward an image of Maycomb being a utopian society. Scout tells us about the sweet side of Maycomb but as the novel progresses, another aspect of the town is reveled. Among the innocence there is an underlying theme of prejudice and hatred. This aspect presents Maycomb as a corrupt society. There is an apparent division in social classes according to color and wealth. Maycomb is structured into four classes.

Jem puts forward the idea of the social classes in the novel. "There's four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes" (pg 226). He doesn't understand why there is a social division but he knows it is present. Jem also describes how each of the classes interacts with each other. "...our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks" (pg. 226). The Maycomb women in the missionary society, the Cunninghams versus the Ewells, the African Americans in Calpurnia's church, and others are examples of the complicated pattern of classes.
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The first class would consist of well-off, white people. People such as Atticus Finch, a white lawyer would fit into this class along with Judge Taylor, Miss Maudie Attkinson, Miss Stephanie Crawford, Mrs. Merriweather, Ms. Gates and most of the neighbors of Maycomb. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the class. An example would be when Mrs. Merriweather spent an afternoon at the Missionary Circle complaining about the troubles of the poor Mrunas in Africa, but just a few moments later, she says, "Might've looked like the right thing to do at the time, I'm sure. I ...

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