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To Kill A Mockingbird: A Speck Of Light In The Darkness

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A Speck of Light In the Darkness Love, racism, and gender-inequality are all themes used in the award-winning book, To Kill A Mockingbird, but how are they shown throughout? Essentially, Jem and Scout’s father Atticus Finch is set to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Throughout this time, Scout learns about what her tiny town of Maycomb truly is and what she must become. Right after a near-death experience, Scout finally understands that to harm an innocent man is the same as killing a mockingbird, which never does anything wrong. Yet, throughout the movie, directed by Robert Mulligan, there were many changes to story that heavily affected other dominant themes expressed by their corresponding key events. To begin with, …show more content…

“‘After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I”’ (Lee 318). This quote ascertains the moment that Scout has finally become a “lady”. Through the process of this transformation though, Scout saw how women were expected to always wear dresses, drink tea, and never play rough. Scout saw what life was like for a woman and she tried to fight it, but only stopped for the sake of Atticus. Yet in the movie, Aunt Alexandra never once made an appearance in the entirety of the film. There was also very little talk or scenes that could relate to gender inequality. In the end, this subtraction from the movie completely took away the theme of gender inequality, which was a very stupid on the Robert Mulligan’s part. All in all, the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, had some very drastic differences compared to the book, most being deletions. These scenes, or events, greatly changed the plot and weakened the amount of themes present, or merely took them away. These three main removals enacted by Robert Mulligan were: Jem destroying Mrs. Dubose’s flowers, mainly showing love and some racism, Calpurnia taking Jem and Scout to her church which showed family a great deal of racism and community, and finally, Aunt Alexandra moving in, which showed the viewer about gender

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