Do The Right Thing, is about life in a suburb neighbourhood of New York, which follows them on the hottest day of the year. The heat is a symbol for conflict. The main character, Mookie, a black, young man, works in Sal’s pizzeria and thinks by working so much, he is doing the right thing. Both Mookie’s sister and his girlfriend, disagree with him working so much; and say he should take some time off and spend some time with them. Over the course of the day, conflict builds. Finally, when Radio Raheem comes into the pizzeria with his music playing loud, Sal, the owner of the pizzeria, yells at Radio Raheem to shut it off, and jumps on him. They start fighting. This leads to more fights, and more conflict. Finally the conflict dies down when the police come and murder Radio Raheem. Then conflict starts again when Mookie throws a trashcan at Sal’s Pizzeria, and Smiley, a mentally handicapped man, lights the pizzeria on fire. The police come again to the scene, and fire crews have to battle people attacking them, while they try to put out the fire.
The theme of racism is prevalent in both To Kill A Mockingbird and Do The Right Thing. White people run the society in both the film and book. For example, in To Do The Right Thing, Sal, a middle aged, white man, owns a pizzeria, whereas the black people are either unemployed, or have low paying jobs, like Mookie. Mookie, who works as a deliveryman for Sal’s pizzeria, does not get nearly as much money as Sal does. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus, Scout and Jem’s father, is a lawyer, where as Calpurnia, his surrogate wife and his family’s cook, gets treated well but does not get as nearly as much money as Atticus. Atticus, like many other lawyers, is a highly educated man, and with a good education, you can make a good salary. Black people could not get the same education as the white people, they were not allowed. Without a good education, you cannot get a well paying job. Due to the fact that Calpurnia could not get as much education as Atticus, she could not get a very good job.
The settings of To Kill A Mockingbird and Do The Right Thing are similar for the following reasons. Firstly, both stories take place in neighbourhood settings where everyone knows each other. Secondly, they both take place in hot settings, which in both cases, symbolises conflict. “Bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square”(pg.5). Both stories have conflict between black and white people, where in both stories black people are killed. Both killings were due to racist reasons, where white men hated a black man, so they killed him.
The main characters in To Kill A Mockingbird, and Do The Right Thing, are very different. First, the main character in To Kill A Mockingbird is Scout, a young, white girl that lives in a small town, called Maycomb County. The main character in Do The Right Thing is Mookie, a black man in his late teens, and lives in the big city of New York. Second, Scout, is fascinated by a man whom she, Jem and Dill, call Boo Radley, a mentally slow person. “Lets try to make him come out”(pg.13). Scout also spends a lot of time with her brother, Jem, and her friend, Dill. Mookie, a young man, is obsessed with money and his job, and rarely sees his friends and relatives. Finally, Scout is different from Mookie because she has a strong father figure to look up to, where as in Do The Right Thing, there was no father figure to be a role model for Mookie. You could say that Scout had an advantage over Mookie, because she had a caring father that always tried to help when he could. Mookie, had no one to look up to, so he had to learn things a harder way, by experience. Learning by experience is always a harder way to learn things, because you are the one who suffers when you make the mistake. If someone else has already made the mistake, they can tell you that it is a bad idea to do the same thing they did; Mookie did not have this opportunity, he had to learn things by himself.
To Kill A Mockingbird and Do The Right Thing have some similarities, but at the same time are very different stories. For example, Mookie and Scout were very different characters and lived very different lifestyles; Scout was lucky she had a caring father that she could use as a role model, where as Mookie was not so lucky, he had no role model to look up to and had to learn from experience. “If your father’s anything, he’s civilized at heart”(pg.98). On the other hand, the theme of racism was a very big part of both stories. Without the racism, the court case would not have happened in To Kill A Mockingbird, and the big conflict at the end of Do The Right Thing would not have taken place. The stories would have been different stories if there was not a theme of racism.
