The poverty and lack of outside influence causes prejudice. Maycomb rejects outside influences because of the old fashioned views. The town’s backwardness is highlighted by the way in which there are no activities or past times in Maycomb. “A day was twenty four hours long but seemed longer.” There was no wish for the town to change. The outside influences would soon be cut out in later generations as the children are brought up to live by the narrow-minded views of Maycomb. This means that the prejudicial attitudes of the people in Maycomb would remain unchanged and unchallenged.
The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the community-fuelled racism in Maycomb are negative qualities for social and religious prejudice. The community’s narrow-mindedness is formed because the people have been unchanged for many decades. This causes prejudice towards anything that is different from the normality. The Maycomb people have very inward looking views and so these views are passed on from generation to generation.
Another example of prejudice toward somebody is the isolation of the Radleys. This isolation is due to this family not attending church. They also don’t conform to other codes of behaviour. The Radleys suffer religious prejudice because of this and social prejudices because they keep themselves to themselves, apart from everyone else. The society sees church as a pastime and therefore pleasurable, Mr Radley does not attend church. The community seeing church as a pastime reflects their inward views and their narrow mindedness.
Maycomb is a very religious town with religion appearing to have a strong influence on the community. Their religion (probable Baptist) has very strict views and believes that anything that is pleasant is a sin. They are therefore prejudiced against a great deal of people who are different from them with different opinions. An example of their prejudice is when Miss Maudie says, “some of ‘em came out of the woods one Saturday and passed by this place and told me and my flowers we were going to hell?” Their belief is so extreme they feel they should threaten those who are different. Scout is shocked by this as she thinks Miss Maudie is the ‘best lady’ she knows. Miss Maudie is a good role model for Scout as she is not prejudice against anyone presented in the novel.
In the trial there is a lot of racial prejudice toward Tom Robinson. There is not a doctor present who could testify that Tom couldn’t have committed the crime because of his disability. This is so that Tom is definitely convicted just because he is black. With a doctor it would be easy to clear Tom of the charge. “Mr Tate blinked again as if something had suddenly been made plain to him.” This shows how obvious it was that Tom had not committed a crime against Mayella Ewell. However Tom is convicted anyway because he testifies that he felt sorry for Mayella. This disgusts the white people in the crowd. He knows how the town is racist and is very nervous about how they will react to him. “Tom’s discomfort was not from humility.” Tom knows that the white community will think it completely disrespectful for him to feel sorry for Mayella because he is black and she is white. This is a good example of the racial prejudice in Maycomb.
I believe that Harper Lee presents her own views on prejudice through the little incidents listed above. She uses the Finch family as the thing to compare the prejudice in the whole community to, and as Scout belongs to the family, we can see what is good and bad in the novel. A good example of how Scout is used as the ‘good’ in the novel is when Atticus is guarding the prison where Tom Robinson is kept. She is faced with Mr. Cunningham, who represents the ‘bad’ side. When she starts talking to him, like he is not opposing all that Atticus believes right, Mr Cunningham sees what he is doing and retreats his mob.
The novel shows that the treatment towards blacks in the community was wrong and should never happen again, some example are above. By judging people before you know them is a good way of loosing friends, the jurymen judged whether the person was guilty or not based on their race and colour and the novel shows the racial divisions in society between black and white people and how blacks are shown as inferior. I think that Harper Lee dislikes prejudice very much, but knows what it can do to people. From reading ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ I can only guess that Harper Lee has had some experience with prejudice of different forms, and that she was the onlooker, as Scout was in the novel.
