Prejudice in Maycomb

A detailed Summary of Prejudice in Maycomb

Prejudice affects not only the prejudged, but also the prejudging person. In her novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee displays many of the unfortunate consequences of both the people who are prejudged as well as of the people who are prejudging. Prejudice blinds the prejudger and hurts the innocent prejudged. Thus prejudice affects all people involved.

The prejudged are not the only victims; the pre-judgers are also injured by their own actions. Because the pre-judgers form an opinion so quickly, they don't discover the talents of the person they are prejudging. A misguided notion is often very hard to get rid of, and blinds the pre-judger so that he cannot see the truth. Once the cloud of prejudgment is out of their eyes, the pre-judger can have a newfound respect for the person they had once prejudged. Lee portrays this when she shows that Scout and her brother, Jem, think their father "[is] feeble ... [and doesn't] do anything" (89) worth bragging about. Their paternal shame is turned to awe when Atticus, "the deadest shot in Maycomb," (98) kills a mad dog from a distance with one shot. Because Scout and Jem do not look past Atticus's exterior, they cannot imagine their father's real abilities. Sometimes the prejudger

Prejudice will always be in the world. It is an invisible weapon that wounds in an indescribable manner. A person who is prejudged cannot avoid being affected by this weapon, but the potential pre-judger can choose whether or he wants to affect or be affected. He can choose to change the way he sees things and be able to absorb life to its fullest possibility.

The effects on the prejudged are even more blatant. Many times the prejudged suffer tremendously. Sometimes they even lose their lives, as in the case of Tom Robinson. He was a young black man and "if he had been whole he would have been a fine specimen of a man"(192) as Scout states. He had a family with three children to support. He was accused and charged with rape for the sole he reason he is black. When he went to jail Atticus had told him that they had a good chance for an appeal, but "Tom was tired of white men's chances and preferred to take his own" (236). He tried to escape the jail, but the guards shot him down as he was climbing over the fence. The jail guards completely discarded the fact that Tom [is] a person with a family to support; "he [is] just an escaping prisoner [to them]...what was one Negro more or less among two hundred?" (235). Because both Ewells "[want] to destroy the evidence of [their] offense"(203) Tom Robinson and his family are crushed under a "giant... foot" (240), the same foot Dill said he sees stepping on Helen Robinson, Tom's

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Approximate Word count = 965
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English