Discuss the family unit in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Hard Times'.
Discuss the family unit in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Hard Times' When looking at Hard Times and To Kill a Mockingbird a central theme, which becomes more obvious throughout the two novels is the education of the respective children and how they are taught to move from childhood to adulthood. Throughout the two novels we encounter various family units with different backgrounds and attitudes to life. The main family in Hard Times is the Gradgrinds and the main family in to Kill a Mockingbird are the Finches. There are many fundamental differences between the two families in the way the children are bought up, the attitudes, morals and views of the fathers and lastly the social class of the two families. These differences can be applied to other families in the novels. However there are also some similarities, which can be identified between the two families. Within this essay I hope to discuss the similarities and differences between the families in the two novels. Perhaps the main difference between the two main families is how and what the children are taught by their fathers. In the Gradgrind house fact and rationalism are focused on and fantasy and childlike thoughts are squashed out of the children. 'Now I want facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing else but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life, plant nothing else and, root up everything else You can only
To Kill a Mockingbird
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a book written by the author Harper Lee and these past few weeks my classmates and I have been reading the play version of this book, which has been dramatized by Christopher Sergel. Even though we have read the play of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and not the book I still feel that it covers all the themes, characters and issues that Harper Lee included in her book. A Mockingbird doesn't eat up people's gardens or nest in corncribs, all they do is sing their hearts out for all to hear and enjoy. They are harmless. At the beginning of the play Jean, who plays older Scout, tells us of how her father Atticus asked Scout and her brother never to kill a mockingbird. Even though there are no actual mockingbirds included in the play there are many characters who I feel Harper Lee uses to symbolize the inner mockingbird in people. "To Kill a Mockingbird" tells the story of the citizens of Maycomb, Alabama from the eyes of a young girl named Scout who is the daughter of the local lawyer Atticus Finch. Lately the Finch family have had their named slandered about the community as Atticus has taken on the case of a negro man named Tom Robinson and is actually trying to win his case. Even though slavery had been abolished in the southern states for many years many people still act as though negro people and their associates were of a lower standard and class than
To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill A Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird The American Classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, first began as two separate short stories. Harper Lee needed a way to transform these stories into one compelling novel of human injustice. ***Throughout the novel, many themes/motifs are explored. The title of To Kill a Mockingbird carries a great deal of symbolic value. It provides a necessary function to unify the two major plot elements. In this story of innocence destroyed by evil, the mockingbird represents the idea of innocence. "I'd rather you shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." Atticus is referring to the idea that a mockingbird is a harmless creature and does nothing but sing and bring happiness to the world. Miss Maudie explains to Jem: "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but ... sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." The mockingbird is a symbol for two of the characters in the novel: Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. In the novel, the people of Maycomb only know Boo Radley and Tom Robinson by what others say about them. These two characters are harmless songbirds that are sinfully destroyed. In the beginning of the story, Boo represents the unknown. The children of Maycomb believe that anything that comes from
To Kill A Mockingbird
"TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD" -Harper Lee Portfolio by Philipp C. Protschka Grade 9 Table of Contents .) Why the book is called "To Kill A Mockingbird"? 2.) Compare and contrast the book and the film. 3.) "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behaviour -to innocence and experience kindness and cruelty. Love and hatred, humour and pathos." What is your view? 4.) "Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." Place this extract in context and discuss which characters in the book you consider to be blue jays and which characters you consider to be mockingbirds. 5.) Discuss Harper Lee's presentation of the theme of family life in To Kill A Mockingbird. You should concentrate on the Radley, Harris and Ewell families in your discussion. 6.) Discuss, using examples from the book, how Atticus raises his children. What does he teach them and what lessons do they learn in the process? 7.) Compare and contrast the characters of Scout and Jem. 8.) Write a letter from Mrs Merriweather to J. Grimes Everett. In it, ask him about his work and praise him and encourage him. The main purpose of the letter is to tell him of Tom Robinson's trial and any events (especially the reaction of the Negroes) which take place afterwards. Bear in mind that Mrs Merriweather holds strong opinions about everything and will
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird Examine miss Maudie's relationship to the Finches and to the rest of Maycomb. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Jem and Scout learn about and experience both the goodness of human nature as well as its corruption. One of the characters that is essential to this novel is Miss Maudie. Miss Maudie is Scout's next door neighbor. She loves being outdoors and is one of the few people in town who feels that Tom Robinson deserves a fair trial, and that he most likely did not do what Mayella Ewell is accusing him of. Miss Maudie shares Atticus' same passion for justice, and is one os Scout's and Jem's favorite adults within Maycomb. She offers Jem and Scout many insights into their father's character, and helps them understand why he does what he does. Overall, Miss Maudie's point of view is different from the typical civilian of Maycomb, which is why she is able to provide Scout and Jem with important lessons and experiences. Miss Maudie Atkinson lives across the street from the Finch family; she had known the Finches for many years, having been brought up on the Buford place, which Choi 2 was near the Finch's ancestral home, Finch Landing. She is described as a woman of about fifty who enjoys baking and gardening. Miss Maudie befriends Scout and Jem and tells them about Atticus as a boy. During the course of the novel, her house burns
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill A Mockingbird is an award-winning novel written by Harper Lee. The novel was published in 1960 and the movie was filmed in 1961. A six-year-old girl by the name of Scout is the main character and narrates the story line in the movie. The movie takes place in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. Maycomb is portrayed as a small, sleepy, depression-era town during the 1930's depression era. The plot of the movie revolves around the arrest and trial of an unjustly accused black man named Tom Robinson. Robinson, accused of raping a white girl, is defended by Scout's attorney father, Atticus Finch. Finch is known in the community as an extremely kind person and respected lawyer. To Kill A Mockingbird illustrates to the audience the true attitude of small-town life in the 1930s South. The story reflects the unjust consequences of ignorance, prejudice, and hate as well as the values of courage, honor, fairness and decency. One of the main topics of To Kill A Mockingbird is "racism". Maycomb, Alabama is mixed community composed of both black and white residents. The blacks and the whites have extreme racial views towards one another. During the movie Tom is accused of a crime he did not commit. He is judged and found guilty basically due only to the color of his skin. Much of the white community in Maycomb agreed with the court decision because of
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird By Haris Ahmed "...As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that man is trash." This is a key quotation, which demonstrates racial prejudice in the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", by Harper Lee. The author uses different techniques to make the theme of prejudice clear. The setting of "To Kill a Mockingbird" was in Alabama, in the fictional Maycomb County, in the 1930's. During this time black people suffered a great deal of discrimination from white people. This was the result of the American Civil War, which took place almost 100 years before. This caused a lot of racial tension and antagonism amongst black and white people. Despite the racial tension, there were no immediate signs of prejudice, until later on in the book. At the beginning, the author tries to give the impression Maycomb County is a peaceful and tranquil town, by creating a laid-back and slow-moving atmosphere. A quote which shows Maycomb County's atmosphere at the beginning of the book is: "People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but
To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill A Mockingbird "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is a novel, which deals with many social issues. The most prominent of these is prejudice. The main incident in the novel, which focuses on prejudice, is the trial in which a black man is wrongly accused, charged and convicted. Other themes, which are identified, are, class division in society, which is shown both with the black community and also by the way the Ewells are treated. Poverty is also shown, with the Ewells as well as the Cunninghams, most of the coloured community and even in some ways, Scout and her family. One way that poverty is shown is when Mr Cunningham has to pay Atticus for his work by giving them wood and the produce of his hunting trips. Another theme brought into the novel was loneliness, which is shown mostly by Mayella Ewell. Courage is shown by Atticus when he shoots the "mad dog" and this courage is also show by Mrs Dubose when she makes herself stop the medication to prove something to herself. Ignorance is shown by most of the townspeople, as it seems to be firmly in place that anything different should be feared and no attempt to understand anything new should be made, especially when it comes to prejudice. One of the main reasons for this closed mindedness is the place that Maycomb is situated in. The town is set in Alabama in Southern America; this alone almost guarantees that
To Kill A Mockingbird
What Message Does The Novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Convey About Prejudice? 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was set in Alabama during the thirties and wrote the novel in the sixties when Civil Rights Movement was being written. The message of the novel is that people should not be judged according to who/what they are but should be judged on their actions and behaviours. Harper Lee shows prejudice in events like Tom Robinson's trial, also through characters like Arthur (Boo) Radley. Prejudice is also shown in the day to day activities. The novel is titled 'To kill a Mockingbird' because the mockingbird represent innocence. At the beginning of the novel Atticus tells Scout and Jem "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit `em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird," which illustrates and explains you should not kill innocent beings. Tom Robinson is clearly a mockingbird. He is an untainted person who has in no way pained or harmed anybody and is directly and deliberately shot by society not because of justice but prejudice. The jurors sentence him to death not because he did anything wrong but because of the prejudice. He is then later shot for trying to escape this unjust ruling. So Tom Robinson just like a mockingbird is shot for no reason at all. At the beginning of the novel we are introduced to life in Maycomb, life in Maycomb is small town life where the
To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird The novel as a whole seems to be a reliable and unexaggerated portrait of southern American's prejudice. It implies that society disciplines children into being discriminative by pointing out that when people are treated unfairly "only the children weep." The book is very persuasive due to Lee's implications about society. She never directly attacks it but still manages to change the way the reader sees aspects of society and consider his own prejudices. In the novel, there are references to real life events that were happening at the time. For example, in 1930's sharecropping began in order to reconstruct the society after the civil war between the north and south, people such as The Cunninghams were victims of sharecropping, that is why they were poor. The cause of the war was to abolish slavery in the south, the south lost the war, but still believed black people were unequal to white people, so the segregation law was brought forward, i.e. white people and black people living in different settlements in a town. This did not please many black people, civil rights activists like Malcolm. X and Martin Luther King fought for black people's freedom. Malcolm X was assassinated, but Martin Luther King continued the fight until something was done. Many people found the book shocking, as a white woman who was openly opposed to the way black people were
