To Kill a Mockingbird XVII

A detailed Summary of To Kill a Mockingbird XVII

"To better understand a person you have to climb up inside their skin and walk around in it." The quote previously stated by Atticus in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an unveiling of the upcoming forms of prejudice. The setting for the novel is a fictitious town called Maycomb. This town is situated in Alabama. The racial prejudice shown in the novel has a lot to do with the town being situated in the southern United States. The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the community fueled racism in Maycomb. These negative qualities account for the social and religious prejudices in the novel. Maycomb people have very inward looking views and so these views are passed on from generation to generation. Prejudice is the preconceived opinion of a person or thing. There are three main types of prejudice: racial prejudice, social prejudice and religious prejudice. These three are the types of prejudice most dominant in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Maycomb is a very religious town with the foot-washing Baptists appearing to have a strong influence on the community. The foot-washers have very strict views and believe that anything which is pleasurable is a sin. They are therefore prejudiced against people who are

The black community must also wait until all of the whites have gone into the courthouse and taken their seats. This again articulates the way the blacks are segregated from the whites. This is shown further when the blacks are made to sit upstairs when the whites are allowed to sit downstairs. The blacks are also segregated in a very strange way as they have a separate section of the newspaper. This could seem ridiculous but it shows the heights the whites go to segregate the blacks completely. At the trial a white man known as Dolphus Raymond is introduced. He is one of the most open-minded characters in the novel. He has children by a black woman and is not racist in any way. He is also fairly well off so does not struggle as much as the other people in Maycomb. He is seen as a social oddity because of his partner and children but mainly because he is supposedly always drunk. "he's got a Coca-Cola bottle full of whiskey in there" Although everyone thinks there is whiskey in the bottle there is only Coca-Cola. Dolphus Raymond allows the town to think whatever they want because he believes that this helps the whites to understand why he lives the way he does. He is forced to pretend he is a social oddity because of the racist members of the community. In the trial there is a lot of racial prejudice toward Tom Robinson. There is not a doctor present who could testify that Tom Robinson couldn't have committed the crime because of his disability. This is so that Tom Robinson is definitely convicted just because he is black. With a doctor it would be easy to clear Tom Robinson of the charge. "Mr. Tate blinked again as if something had suddenly been made plain to him." This shows how obvious it was that Tom Robinson had not committed a crime against Mayella Ewell. However Tom Robinson is convicted anyway because he testifies that he felt sorry for Mayella. This disgusts the white people in the crowd. He knows how the town is racist and is very nervous about how they will react to him. "Tom's discomfort was not from humility."

The town doesn't care about Tom or his family and just think that it was a typical thing for a black man to do. The town thinks he is cowardly to run away. They put it down to Tom being black. "Nigger always comes out in 'em." This once again shows how narrow-minded and thoughtless the town's attitude is. The town ignores what Mr. Underwood wrote in the obituary where he tried to stick up for Tom. He said it isn't right to shoot a cripple no matter what they are doing. He likens the death to that of songbirds killed by hunters. "He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds." This quote emphasizes the Mockingbird imagery of Tom Robinson because he is killed for no real reason. Mr. Underwood uses simple language so that the obituary is suitable for children to understand. He does this because, like Dolphus Raymond, he believes that the children of Maycomb are young enough to understand and maybe change the attitude in the future.

The white townspeople's intolerance of other white people who do not fit their rigid codes of behavior is nothing compared with the intolerance and prejudice exhibited in their dealings with the black people of the town. Segregated far from the whites the black community, beside the town dump. This is a good example of how the white people view the black people. The Caucasian towns people see the African American inhabitants as rubbish and so isolate them with the rubbish of the town. This shows how the whites see themselves as better than the black people.

The white community is fearful of the black community, because they are different.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Tom Robinson's, Miss Maudie, Tom Robinson, African American, Maycomb Tom, Dolphus Raymond, Harper Lee, Miss Blount, Maycomb Atticus, Aunt Alexandria, black community, tom robinson, racial prejudice, white community, black people, miss maudie, religious prejudice, dolphus raymond, codes behavior, prejudice maycomb, main types prejudice, prejudice racial prejudice, teacher north alabama, black people white, social prejudice religious,

Approximate Word count = 2925
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels