To Kill A Mockingbird-Racial Prejudice
During the Great Depression, times were very hard for minorities and they were treated harshly and poorly. If any blacks were accused of committing crimes by whites, ninety-eight percent of the time they were found guilty even if the evidence clearly stated that they were innocent. If any white lawyers were assigned to defend the blacks, most of the time they hardly defended the blacks because of the pressure they received from their community, friends and family. In the story "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Atticus and his children, Jem and Scout, are put under a load of pressure from everyone when Atticus takes up a case to defend Tom Robinson, a Negro who was accused of rape. Atticus is put under a tremendous amount of pressure taking up this case, mostly from the residents of Maycomb County, but even his own sister pressures him to drop the case. The town was pressuring Atticus to not defend Tom because he was a Negro and they had thought that since Tom was black he was automatically guilty. This strong lawyer takes up the case saying ".. If I didn't I co
defiance made them alike."(page 152) Scout isn't going to handle the pressure very well and will respond to the pressure with her fists. In this story, each person of Atticus' family encounters pressure from all aspects of their life because of this horrible case. Each person handles the pressure differently such as just ignoring it, holding what they feel about it all inside, or by letting their fists take control of the situation, but all of them will come together by the very strong bond of love this family has. The pressure Jem and Scout get from the other kids at school is very different yet similar to the pressure Atticus receives. At school, the kids taunt Jem and Scout calling them and their father nigger-lovers and the kids just expect them to take it. Jem being the mature child of the family, ignores them, but Scout doesn't let anyone criticize her or her family and usually just punches them in the jaw. Atticus tells her to just ignore them, but as soon as someone mentions some disrespectful words, she soon forgets and her first instinct is to let her fists f
Some common words found in the essay are:
Scout Dill, Jem Scout, Cecil Jacobs, , Negro Tom, Tom Atticus, Aunt Alexandra, Maycomb County, Robinson Negro, jem scout, Lee Atticus, pressure atticus, defend tom, defends tom, cecil jacobs, handles pressure, amount pressure,
Approximate Word count = 725
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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