Isolation In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

The United States of America claims in its constitution that all men are created equal, but for three and a half centuries that was not the case. In To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee places the reader in Maycomb, Alabama 1963. Lee places us in the eyes of A eight year old girl named Jean Louise Finch, Scout, living during the Great Depression and this time of prejudice. She lives with her father Atticus, her maid Calpurnia, and her older brother Jem. While Scout refuses to become the ideal southern lady she also learns the dark realization in her hometown of Maycomb that people are racist. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee powerfully analyzes the theme of isolation and it causes through the stories of several unusual characters.

Jem and Scout meet a new kid named Dill who is from Mississippi, but is staying with his aunt for the summer. After getting to know him a little Jem mentally examines him. Lee writes “Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was Snow White and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him” (9). With Jem's initial observation of Dill he seems him as a curiosity. Dill seems like an albino, for his hair is Snow White. With this unique look Dill can not fit into any crowd, for he is isolated appearance wise. A second way Lee uses isolation through unusual characters is when Dill runs away from his home in Mississippi and goes to the finch's house. In the novel Scout feels something that's under her bed so she fetches Jem to find out what's under there, but it's Dill. Obviously Jem and Scout are confused so Dill explains to Jem and Scout that his father who wants nothing to do with him so he locked and chained up dill in the basement. Lee writes “. . .having bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in meridian) by his father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas. . .” (186). This explanation helps further prove the idea of isolation because Dills parents don't even want him. It is unsure if this is what actually happened, but it is

At the trial for Tom Robinson's life the third person to be questioned is Mayella Ewell, the rape victim and Bob Ewell's daughter. While Atticus questions her he refers to her as ma’am and miss Mayella she gets offended, for she thinks that Atticus is mocking her. Mayella says “long’s he keeps callin’ me ma’am an sayin’ miss Mayella. I don't haft a take this sass, I ain't called upon to take it” (Lee 243). The way Mayella reacts to Atticus addressing her with respect shows that no one treats her in that manner. The reader further learns that Mayella has lived a recluse life, for she is different compared to the rest of her family. A second way Lee expresses isolation through unusual characters is when Tom Robinson is testifying and he said how he felt sorry for Mayella. After Mayella leaves the stand in a tearful episode Atticus brings up his defendant, Tom Robinson, so he can't get questioned. Toms claim is different from the others, for he says he didn't touch Mayella but she touched him. Tom says “. . .when the next thing I knows she-she'd grabbed me round the legs. . .” (Lee 259). Tom explains that Mayella hugged Tom around the legs while he was on the chair. In this society it was taboo for a white woman/man to have any attraction towards a person of color. Mayella is so low on the social scale that she can't even get affection from a person of color. Mayella has