What Does 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Reveal About the 1930s American Society?

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What Does ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Reveal About the 1930s American Society?

        To Kill a Mockingbird reveals much about the American society in the 1930s which are the main themes that are brought up in the book. The book was written in the 1960s, it was Harper Lee’s first book. It is based on the 1930s in the deep south of North America about a small Alabama town named Maycomb. After the civil war in the 1861-1865, former slaves suffered widespread racial discrimination, especially in the South. This discrimination led to other later effects the Jimmy Crow laws, first developed in a few states later spreading. A major theme is prejudice against certain groups of people like the lower white class and the black community. The segregation between the different communities is caused by ignorance about the unknown and differences between communities which can cause racism.

        One of the strongest themes of the book is prejudice because there are many strong examples throughout the whole book. Prejudice, strictly defined, a learned, preformed, and unsubstantiated judgment or opinion about an individual or a group, either favorable or unfavorable in nature. However, nowadays the word means a dislike to a group of people because they belong to different group or category of people. Prejudice is based on racism or generalization about a group of people; the best examples of these are ones where there are laws against certain groups of people. In To Kill a Mocking Bird there are no laws in the book about other groups of people but the higher classes state that is morally wrong to have anything to do with a lower class. We also see that certain people open their mind for example Aunt Alexandra see that Walter is as much human as she is this is evident on both counts while in a conversation with Atticus Aunt Alexandra says, "I've been wrong, Atticus. I've been so very wrong." We see each character at his weakest and watch as he grows stronger and more accepting. In chapter 16 people think that Dolphous Raymond is an alcoholic because he married a black woman by holding a can of beer people say that he is constantly drunk and this is the reason that he married a black woman, this is kind of a excuse for what he has done, but Dolphous Raymond is not drunk he pretends to be. Another example of prejudice would be when Jem, Scout and Dill make up plays about Boo Radley the way that they mock him from picking up rumors from what other people say it is very strange but they make assumptions about Boo which is not the way that Atticus raised them.

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        There is segregation between the four groups of people in the book. First of all there is the high class white who are above everyone and who are considered as the wealthy. The next class is the working white classes who have jobs like farming and struggle to provide like the Cunninghams. The group would be the very poor Ewells who live on a rubbish dump they accept any financial help from anyone unlike the Cunninghams who will not. The lowest class in the Maycomb society is the blacks there are of course smaller groups within the black community but ...

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This essay is well researched and has a great deal of social and historical context which is necessary in order to answer the question fully. There are some well chosen quotes which support statements. The writer clearly understands the main themes of the book and shows knowledge of the novel as a whole. At times the essay needs to be focused more on the question and some lines of argument are not discussed fully.