“Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays.”
Here, she is describing First Purchase M.E Church which Calpurnia took her to. This again reminds us of the segregation in those days, the difference of lifestyles and the lack of respect for black people.
This naive narrative technique allows us to witness Scout learning about life as she grows up as these two quotes show:
“…after all he’s just a negro.”
This is in chapter 19 when she tries to explain to Dill why Mr Gilmer was so rude to Tom Robinson. Here she shows her naivety by saying that black people are different and inferior. However, later on in chapter 23, she says:
“Naw Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
Here, she shows she has learned that all people are born the same and are equal inside.
This aspect of the novel may have meant to be symbolic of the general American population in the 1930s. Lee may have been trying to show that white people’s beliefs were wrong in the ‘30s but they had been improved by the 1950s.
An interesting aspect to the structure of this novel is how Lee has used juxtaposition in chapters and characters to illustrate the themes to the readers and make them seem more extreme and apparent when compared to the contrasting theme. An example is the introduction of two characters called Walter Cunningham and Burris Ewell. They are both young children but they have been brought in very different lifestyles. Walter is introduced in chapter 2 when he refuses to take a quarter from his teacher for lunch. This was because Walter’s family are very poor but honourable, having been struck by the Great Depression. They refuse to borrow money from anyone because they would have trouble paying it back. Walter understands this and does not take the teacher’s money despite not having any lunch. Scout shows her maturity by standing up and telling the new-in-town teacher about him. This line tells us what Scout knows about their situation:
“He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life.”
In contrast, Burris Ewell, who is introduced in the next chapter, comes from a family which can be described as white trash. The Ewells live on the outskirts of town and they are rude, dirty and disrespectful. They are also troublesome so they often get away with things that they shouldn’t. Atticus described them to Scout as “the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations.”
In keeping with the tradition of the Ewell family, Burris attends half of the first day of school and then goes home after disrupting the class. One boy called Chuck Little explains this to their new teacher:
“They come first day every year and then leave.”
They do this so that they are just about obeying the law. This really typifies the mentality of the Ewells and by placing this incident right after that of poor Walter Cunningham’s; it makes us compare their lives and their families. This makes us remember about it because of the diversity.
Another example of this juxtaposition is chapters 10 and 11. At the beginning of chapter 10, we are told that Scout is ashamed of her father because he does not do anything lively. But later on, we learn that he used to be the best shooter of a gun in the town and that he used to be called ‘One shot Finch’. Atticus is called home by the sheriff to gun down a mad dog that is heading towards the Finch house. This results in the kids being proud of him and thinking that he is really brave.
However, in chapter 11, Scout and Jem realise the true meaning of courage when they learn about Mrs Henry Lafayette Dubose’s predicament. She is a character that they hate because she is rude to them and calls Atticus a nigger-lover. Out of anger, Jem damages her flowers but is punished by being made to read to her for over a month. Each day he is made to stay a little longer until one day they learn of her death. The sad truth was that she had been addicted to morphine and after learning that she did not have long left; she decided to try and get rid of her habit by going longer without it each day. Jem reading to her served as a distraction. Even though Jem and Scout did not like her anymore than before, they gained a lot of respect for her courage as Scout tells us in this line:
“She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
This juxtaposition serves to teach us what real courage is as we compare the events in both chapters. To know that you are about to die and still try to get rid of an addiction takes real bravery and that is what we are taught. On one level, this is similar to what Atticus does for Tom Robinson. Even though Atticus knew that the case was lost before it started because of all the prejudiced attitudes, he still tried his uttermost to help out the innocent man.
I consider the events of chapter 8 to be another one of those deliberate juxtapositions as well. In this chapter, Jem and Scout have their first experience of snow and enjoy it. Then a disaster happens when a fire breaks out in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s house and destroys most of her belongings.
According to Eula May, the telephone operator, “…it had not snowed in Maycomb County since 1885.” Because of this, I’m sure most of the townspeople would have considered it a miracle. On the other hand, the fire to innocent Miss Atkinson’s house is a tragedy and these two events happen on the same day. Lee’s purpose in doing this would have been the same as introducing Walter Cunningham and Burris Ewell so close together. It is to make the themes from each event sharper and more dramatic. It makes the audience’s emotions go from up and down so that they enjoy the novel more. I think Harper Lee has been very effective in using this technique for her novel.
Each character in the novel adds something to the storyline. Although they are all very distinctive, they are also realistic and we can believe that there would be people like them in a small town in 1930s Alabama. Perhaps it is the autobiographical element of Harper Lee that does this. The in depth descriptions and history that she gives us of characters also adds more realism to them. Most of the characters give us a different insight into prejudice because they are all linked to it one way or another. Some are against and some are for. Some are targets and some are prejudiced themselves. Atticus is a very important character when it comes to the theme of prejudice.
Atticus’ character has to be fully understood before we can look at his attitude to prejudice. He is a respectable, well-known established citizen of Maycomb. When he is first mentioned (by Scout), he is referred to as Atticus, his first name. (“…so we consulted Atticus.”) This in itself tells us a little about his nature and his relationship with his children. It shows that he is easy with them because he lets them call him by his first name and that he likes to be on the same level with them. This suggests that he believes in equality between different ages.
He has a great rapport with his children and although he is not a physically active figure for them, his wisdom teaches them all the right lessons and morals of life. An example of his character benefiting his children is when Scout complains to him about her new teacher, Miss Caroline who uses contemporary methods and tells Scout to stop learning to read at home because Atticus can’t teach properly:
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
This is a significant quote from the book and gives a lot away about Atticus’ personality. He is teaching Scout a great moral about empathy and explaining that her teacher is not familiar to the Maycomb ways. His maxim is that you must have understanding and empathy with a person to relinquish all prejudice. This shows that he has a very objective character. He believes in giving people a chance and not judging someone on their appearance or their first impressions. This quote is also revealing about how he feels towards racism. It shows that he is able to see things from a person’s point of view, regardless of their skin colour or anything else-which is really the whole point of the novel. The word skin perhaps suggests that he is able to empathise with a person of different skin colour. This is how he is able to go against traditional prejudice and defend Tom Robinson for a crime which he believes Tom did not commit. He does not care that Tom Robinson is a black man; he just sees an innocent man.
He does not understand why white people have become so racist towards black people, as he says in this quote:
“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand…”
This quote shows that he finds it unreasonable and senseless that people are still so uncivilised and prejudiced.
When Scout eavesdrops on a conversation between Atticus and his brother, Jack, his reasons for defending Tom Robinson are revealed. He tells us that he didn’t want a case like this because of the extra pressure, the possible abuse that he and his children could be given and the slim chances of the defendant because of racism. But he doesn’t give up because he would be going against everything that he has told and taught his children:
“…do you think I could face my children otherwise?”
He deliberately allowed Scout to listen into that conversation so that she would know why he was doing this. In the conversation, he also tells Jack that he does not want the kids to react to any abuse they receive with violence. This is a clever piece of fathering which shows the wisdom and forwardness of his character. He would rather have that his children know about it and know what he expects them to do rather than be kept in the dark about it. The conversation showed that even though he knows that he and his children will be gossiped about and their reputations will suffer, he does what he knows is right. For this, he must be admired by the readers.
Another quote which exemplifies his bravery and his morality is when he explains his reasons to Scout:
“If I didn’t I couldn’t hold my head up in town, I couldn’t represent my county in legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”
Another aspect of his character which also suggests his anti-racism views is his respect and relationship with Calpurnia, the Finches’ maid. He gives her the freedom to punish or even hit his children as she sees fit, which is something that only someone who has very high value to the family can do. He obviously thinks highly of her as this quote shows:
“We couldn’t operate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought about that?”
This again shows how he is willing to do the right thing by giving someone the respect that they deserve despite being surrounded by the contrasting traditional prejudiced attitudes of the Maycomb people.
His powerful speech in court sums up what Atticus feels about racism. The speech is almost three pages long and it is all very significant but one simple line he said sticks out:
“…all men are created equal…”
Atticus’ influence reaches down to the children, Jem, Scout and Dill. But they react differently to prejudice from Atticus and other adults. Dill reacts by crying when he witnesses prejudice in the form of Mr Gilmer cross-witnessing Tom Robinson in court:
“That old Mr Gilmer doin’ him thataway, talking so hateful to him-”
This shows how Dill got upset when a fellow human being was treated badly by another one. He cries because he is such a young child and from this, we learn that Dill has never heard of and neither supports racism.
Scout is the speaker of the story so we learn a lot about her and witness how she changes over those 2 or 3 years. Her name seems to suggest that she is curious and adventurous which we learn to be true as we read through the story. Even at the start of the novel her maturity is evident with how she acts and talks such as the fact that she can read at that age and the way she tried to explain about Walter Cunningham to her teacher.
Although Scout is the narrator of the novel, we are never given her views on prejudice but it is her actions throughout the story that inform us. Harper Lee uses naïve narrative to change Scout’s personality throughout the novel. At first, Scout does not really have much knowledge of prejudice because she is so young:
Francis -“He’s nothin’ but a nigger-lover!”
Scout “‘He is not!’ I roared. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you better cut it out this red hot minute!’”
When her cousin, Francis calls Atticus a nigger-lover, she is filled with anger despite not knowing what it means. This shows that she is a very protective and also short-tempered girl. It also shows her innocence.
Later on though, she learns about it and declares that “there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” This shows her maturity and her belief that everyone is the same inside.
Another example of her learning more about prejudice is how she and the boys get engulfed by the Maycomb rumours of ‘Boo’ Radley and become obsessed with him. They play games re-enacting what they’ve heard and they try to make contact with him but they do not know that they are distressing him. This is prejudice on an individual basis. People are prejudice towards Boo Radley because they are scared of him and he is different to the rest of them. However, near the end, we see that scout has changed and taken Atticus’ advice about stepping in people’s shoes by looking at the world from Boo’s point of view:
“One time he (Atticus) said that you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”
This shows that Atticus has taught her well and we know that it is unlikely that she will grow up to be prejudiced. Jem also showed that he gained more understanding about Boo Radley by telling Scout this:
“I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time…it’s because he wants to stay inside.”
He says this because he understands that there is a lot of prejudice in the world after watching Tom Robinson being found guilty and Boo Radley would just become a victim of it if he went outside.
We know that Jem is not prejudiced because he is objective whenever he gives his opinion about the court case:
“We’ve won it…don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard-”
He knows that the case made by Atticus is very strong and proves that Tom is innocent but he shows his naivety by not realising that the prejudice attitudes of the jury would win over the compelling evidence that they had been given by Atticus.
After finding out that the verdict was guilty, Jem goes into a state of extreme sadness:
“It was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears…”
On the other hand, Atticus stays relaxed and does not get into a state of frenzy:
“It’s not time to worry yet,”
What Harper Lee is trying to show here is the inexperience and naivety of the younger characters because they do not fully know the unjust ways of the world without equality and integration of all people. This line he says illustrates that:
“They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it-seems that only children cry.”
This is a powerful line which says that adults have either been hardened by the world or they do not understand what they are doing wrong. It is only the innocent children, who have never experienced the injustice of the world that really get upset about it (Dill and Jem crying).
Miss Maudie Atkinson lives next to the Finch’s house and she comes across as a very kind lady. She is a woman that does not like to gossip and only believes the facts. That is why she is not prejudiced. She defends Boo Radley when Scout asks about him and says only what she knows rather than what she has heard:
“I remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me.”
By doing this, she has respect for Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley and is not prejudiced against him. Miss Atkinson is also a victim of prejudice. She is a Baptist but she is not a strict one. Because of this, she is disliked by the foot washing Baptists:
“They thought I spent too much time in God’s outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading my Bible.”
She is a victim because of her lifestyle and how religious she chooses to be. She is also a victim because she is a woman:
“…foot-washers think women are a sin by definition.”
This suggests that because people were generally more religious that some took the Bible literally and were prejudiced towards women. Traditional attitudes also strengthened their views because they thought women were inferior.
There are other victims of prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird as well. The title of the novel symbolises the victims in the book. We are first made aware of this symbolism when Atticus tells Jem not to shoot at mockingbirds with his air-rifle because it was a sin. When Scout asks Miss Atkinson about this, she says:
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy…sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
This symbolises all the victims of prejudice in the story. Tom Robinson did nothing but help Mayella Ewell out, but he got accused of rape, the mob wanted to kill him without anything being proved and he was disrespected in such a formal place like a court by Mr Gilmore, who kept calling him boy. He did not deserve to die the way he did trying to run from jail. Miss Atkinson was a friend to the children and never caused any harm to anyone but she was still looked down on by the foot-washing Baptists. Boo Radley had stayed inside his house for over 15 years but that only fuelled the gossip around town about him. Because he is so different to the rest of the town, he is a victim of individual prejudice. Dolphus Raymond simply saw past the overwhelming prejudice in the town and married a black woman. For this he was a victim of prejudice. Each of them does not deserve what they have been dealt because they have done nothing to society but rather helped it. This is just like a mockingbird not deserving to die because it has done nothing except give humans beautiful music. The cleverness of the title can only be appreciated properly after reading the whole book. Harper Lee has picked a very suitable and effective name for her novel.
The most significant victim is obviously Tom Robinson, the innocent black man accused of raping a white girl. It was in fact the girl, Mayella Violet Ewell who came on to Tom, but her father changed the story so that their reputations wouldn’t be ruined. This is prejudice in the first place because of the fact that it is such a source of shame for a white woman to be with a black man and Mr Ewell would even have Tom executed rather than lose pride.
“She says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a nigger.”
This is what Tom Robinson said happened. It is obvious from his statement that Mayella considered him as second rate but still tried to kiss him because she was so lonely. This again tells us about the general feeling towards black people by others in that time.
Another factor is the mob which went outside the jailhouse to try and kill Tom Robinson. Because it is a black man, they forget all about ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and try to take the law into their own hands and deprive him of a fair court hearing. The court case itself is not fair either because it is made up entirely of white people who are most likely racist:
“I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favour of a coloured man over a white man…”
Here, Reverend Sykes expresses his pessimism.
Other black people in the novel don’t have it much better. Only Calpurnia and a few other people from the black community know how to read and write because they haven’t been allowed a proper education. The ones who can still don’t have better jobs such as Calpurnia and her son, Zeebo who is a garbage man:
“Can’t but about four folks in First Purchase read…”
Also, the place that they live is of much worse quality than where the white people live.
Dolphus Raymond is a white man married and living with a black woman. Because of this, he is an outsider and a victim of prejudice. He is seen as a drunk but in fact he just pretends:
“If I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whisky-that’s why he won’t change his ways.”
This is a strange decision by him but it makes sense if you think about it. He doesn’t want people saying he is immoral and wrong to marry a black woman, so he lets them think he is drunk instead. He actually has cola inside his sack, which he gives to Dill to calm his nerves a bit. This shows that he has a good heart and he is a ‘mockingbird’ of the novel. His children, who are mixed-race, are also victims of prejudice, but this time from blacks and whites. Jem showed his maturity by understanding their situation and explaining it to Dill and Scout:
“Coloured folks won’t have ‘em because they’re half white; white folks won’t have ‘em ‘cause they’re coloured…”
One of the other major victims of prejudice in the novel is Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley. His story is that he caused some trouble with his friends one day and was meant to serve time in the state industrial school, but his father persuaded the judge to let him stay at home. One day, Arthur in what could only be described as temporary insanity stabbed his father on the knee with a pair of scissors. The Radley house stayed an isolated and frightening place for everyone else. The rumour mill got going in Maycomb and Arthur was now supposed to be some sort of a monster that ate raw squirrels and cats and he got the nickname ‘Boo’. The nickname implies something scary like a ghost. An example of the rumours is the description that Jem gives of him:
“There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
When we actually are introduced to him, he turns out to be a timid, delicate and fragile looking man rather than a 6-foot beast!
The only real hints we are given as to what his true personality is rather than the rumours are the things he does for people. He kept leaving gifts for Scout and Jem showing that he was generous and liked children. He also saved them from Mr Ewell showing him to be quite brave and heroic. He stays inside because he doesn’t want everyone looking at him and harassing him. Despite this, people are scared and gossipy of him. This is why he is another ‘mockingbird’ of the novel.
Some people in the 1930s had more modern attitudes towards prejudice and believed in equality. However, most were the opposite such as some key characters in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. The most racist characters in the novel are probably the Ewells and Mrs Dubose. The Ewells live close to the black settlement and they have a free-living, unhealthy, uneducated and law-breaking life:
“No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in school; no public health officer could free them from congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy surroundings.”
They are typical rednecks, hillbillies or white trash. They are presumed to be racist as Mr Ewell wrongly accuses Tom of rape to save his family’s reputation. His outburst in court also suggests this:
“I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!”
Mrs Henry Lafayette Dubose is a sick old woman who strongly believes in her old-fashioned prejudiced views. She constantly shouts at Jem and Scout insulting Atticus for defending Tom Robinson:
“Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!”
She thinks that a black person should not be defended, especially by a white man. Her instant opinion was probably that Tom was guilty, simply because he was black. Her outbursts give us an idea to what most of the people in Maycomb probably thought of Atticus defending a black man.
Her old age suggests that she never had anyone when she was young to tell her that black people were equal to whites and that racism is very wrong. The number of white people supporting equality had risen from almost none before the 20th century to a large percentage of the population by the ‘50s. That is why the older people are most likely to have prejudiced attitudes.
Racism was very hard to overcome in the USA and this was because people felt so strongly about the issue and had so much hate towards black people. This is exemplified by Mrs Dubose. When she dies, Atticus said this:
“She still disapproved heartily of my doings, and said I’d probably spend the rest of my life bailing you out of jail.”
Even on her deathbed, she does not realise her wrongness and stays rooted to her prejudiced views.
Another prejudiced character is Aunt Alexandra, Atticus’ sister. She disapproves of Atticus but does not go out of her way to stop him. She tries to induce her traditional ideas about the role of a woman onto Scout:
“Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea-sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born…”
Nowadays, women and even men are not really forced or expected to behave or dress in a specific way. In the novel, Aunt Alexandra’s idealistic view of women is prejudiced to gender. She dislikes Scout for not wearing fancy dresses like a woman should.
She is also prejudiced to different social statuses such as her refusal to allow Walter Cunningham to their house to eat. She tells Scout that they are not their kind of people and after Scout keeps asking why not, she says:
“Because-he-is-trash, that’s why you can’t play with him.”
Here, it is obvious that she dislikes socialising with people who are of lower class. Overall, Aunt Alexandra is a very traditional woman who has pretty prejudiced attitudes in most respects.
Those are just the major characters in the novel that are prejudiced. My estimate is that 90% of a town like that would have been prejudiced. Most of the town are unhappy with Atticus defending Tom Robinson. Scout overheard this conversation which sums up the attitudes of the townspeople:
“…you know the court appointed him to defend this nigger.”
“Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.”
Harper Lee has used a range of effective literary techniques to make the novel more enjoyable and to get her messages across. These include personifications, metaphors, similes, repetition, alliteration, rhetorical questions and emotive language. I am now going to look at some significant examples.
Getting a mysterious and creepy atmosphere about the Radley house would be crucial in letting the audience understand the superstitious feeling that the people have about it. It would also let the audience know how years of gossip and rumours have made the house seem much more intimidating than it really was.
Lee mentions ‘Boo’ while describing the house with words like ‘malevolent phantom’ so that the readers associate the words with the house and get the idea that it is some sort of a horror house. The actual house’s descriptions are very gloomy making it all seem very grim:
“The house…had long ago darkened to the colour of the slate-grey yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the verandah; oak trees kept the sun away.”
The depressing colours and mention of no light add to the whole feeling of mystery and make it seem like a place you would not like to go.
There is an oak tree in the novel which stands outside the Radley place. A knot-hole on the tree is where Boo leaves gifts like chewing gum and coins for the children to find. This tree is used as a symbol for Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley because it is the only way he is communicating with them. It is his portal to life outside the house and vice versa for Jem and Scout:
“…their roots reached out into the side road and made it bumpy…”
Lee very cleverly uses this line to make it seem as if Boo is reaching out to the children symbolised by the roots of the tree. The purpose of this tree is to show that Boo is not a monster and that he has a very human side.
The tree was obviously very important to Scout and Jem because it was their only means of contact with Boo Radley. So when Nathan Radley cements up the hole, we can expect the sadness that they would feel. Jem is affected more by this though:
“I saw he had been crying; his face was dirty in the right places…I”
Symbolism is also used in other parts of the novel to good effect. When snow falls in Maycomb for the first time in decades, Jem and Scout try to make a snowman. But since there isn’t enough snow, Jem uses dirt and mud to sculpt the base:
“Jem, I ain’t ever heard of a nigger snowman.”
Jem then puts the snow on top. This is to symbolise that everyone is the same inside and that skin is only… skin-deep!
The incident when Atticus shot the mad dog impressed his children and made him out to be courageous but it symbolised his frustration at something. This could have been the inevitable guilty verdict of Tom Robinson and he was venting his irritation out through the gun.
Another use of symbolism was when at the end of the novel, Scout briefly describes the story of ‘The Grey Ghost’ to Atticus to prove she had not been sleeping while he was reading it to her:
“...they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things…Atticus, he was real nice…”
This is a symbolism of Boo Radley because when Scout meets him, she finds out he is nothing like rumours would have had it and he was nice to them. After all, he did sort of save her life!
Another clever technique she used was the Mockingbird symbol motif which I looked at on page 8. It is very effective because the readers see the inhumanity of killing a mockingbird and compare it with the prejudice aimed towards the victims in the novel. People like Tom Robinson, Boo Radley, Dolphus Raymond and even Miss Atkinson are like mockingbirds in that way because they do not deserve what has been targeted at them.
When the news of Tom’s death reaches Helen, his wife, Harper Lee uses a simile voiced by Dill to bring a dramatic and meaningful effect to it:
“…just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her…like you’d step on an ant.”
The description of her just falling down when she realised she’d lost her husband for good really gives you an idea about the anguish and woe that she would be feeling. The metaphor of the ant brings the symbolism of the mocking bird back into the readers’ minds because an innocent ant doesn’t deserve to be killed just like Helen doesn’t deserve to lose a loved one and Tom didn’t deserve to die.
There is a simile early on which serves to give the readers a feeling of what the atmosphere is like in Maycomb:
“Ladies…by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”
There are many of these kinds of useful similes and metaphors throughout the book used by Harper Lee to make descriptions more interesting.
In the novel, some characters are seen as the ‘bad guys’ and Harper Lee uses satire and mockery to reinforce that image. An example is when Miss Atkinson talks about when Stephanie Crawford told her that Boo Radley came outside her window one night:
“I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him?”
This ridicules Miss Crawford and her tales. This adds humour to the novel and tells us how some people see these characters. Another of these characters is Aunt Alexandra, the deeply prejudiced and unpleasant sister of Atticus. Scout’s description of her is deeply amusing:
“I decided that she had been swapped at birth, that my grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead of a Finch…Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest…she was cold and there.”
This dry humour tells us that Scout dislikes her and likes to poke fun at her secretly.
Chapter 26 is centred on a discussion that Scout’s class has with their teacher, Miss Gates about Hitler and his Holocaust scheme. There is a lot of irony here that would make the readers think more about the differences between racism in the USA towards blacks and fascism in Germany with Jews the main victims:
“Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced…There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a mystery to me.”
This is the comment from the teacher about Hitler’s regime. But it is strange how many people saw Hitler as evil for being prejudiced and the country ended up at war to stop this when at home, there was there was still prejudice towards blacks. For some reason, there was a difference between the prejudice towards the Jewish people and the prejudice towards black people and even to people of different class. This is the irony in the chapter. The irony is furthered when Scout remembers what Miss Gates said when coming out of court:
“I heard her say it’s time someone taught ‘em, they were getting’ way above themselves…Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be so ugly about folks right at home-”
This line, said by Scout is what Harper Lee feels and it goes for the general white population of America during WW2. The irony is effective because the dark humour makes you think meaningfully about prejudice, which is what Lee wanted the audience to do.
That brings me to my conclusion and after reading and analysing the book, I can now consider whether it was written for a reason. Most novels are written simply to entertain and to make money, but the greatest and most popular ones often have a purpose, morals that they want to teach and messages that they want people to see.
When Harper Lee wrote ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in the late ‘50s, it was a time when the campaign for civil rights, for blacks, women and the youth was in full steam. But it had not achieved its goals yet and it was fuelling prejudiced violence around the USA. Judging on Harper Lee’s background, I think she was influenced by these events and wanted to tell the world that prejudice is wrong in any form. She wanted to help the campaign succeed by letting the public read this story about prejudice on a relatively small scale and make them see it for what it really was.
She used Tom Robinson and other significant characters to try and prove the stereotypical views wrong. Tom Robinson is portrayed as an innocent, helpful man assisted by the ‘mockingbird’ symbolism. Speech by influential characters like Atticus who described him as a ‘quiet, respectable humble negro’ is used to try and change the image that white people had of black people.
It was released when the Second World War was over and Hitler had been defeated. She used irony to try and make people see that prejudice had to be defeated at home too.
Although this was a massive part of the novel, the actual story was about children growing up and maturing. It was about seeing the world through the eyes of a young girl. It showed the readers that the world seems simple and straight forward when you are innocent and have not witnessed the harsh cruelties in it.
The book is also very useful for children because it teaches them a lot of things about society that are perhaps not discussed in school, not including prejudice. These things are still relevant today because although rules and the ways of life may have changed, people are still the same. Racism, sexism and other prejudice have not been wiped out so people can still relate to it. They can see how it has changed over the decades. The book is also useful for kids growing up because children still go through the same things as they are maturing.
The ending offers an optimistic future for the people of the ‘50s and even us. The most interesting thing is how Scout stands outside the Radley place and recaps the past two years through Arthur Radley’s eyes.
“It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk…Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate…Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break…”
This offers hope because it shows that people in the end will have empathy just like Scout did with ‘Boo’. They will see things from others’ points of view and judge them differently. This is a great technique that Lee used and it sums up the book for the reader and makes them think about the topics involved in the novel.
