Self Identity In To Kill A Mockingbird

A novel of civil right struggle

Harper Lee's only novel got her a Pulitzer Prize, this novel has sold over 30 million copies, it’s a integrated in the U.S. high schools educational system, and has been given the name of “our national novel” by Oprah Winfrey. According to the BBC, the amount of appeal this book has it beyond boundaries, beating the way the Bible (although not Pride and Prejudice) to come in fifth in a British poll for World Book Day. Among British librarians, it was the number one book they would advise. As Megan Behrent alleged while reviewing the novel in her article:” A novel of the civil rights struggle”; published in the Socialist Worker in August 5, 2010, it is as an anti-racial novel of the civil rights movement, with

The Other varies from a person to another and from a generation to another, The first thing we have to do is to identify the Other by exploring it in Lee's novel, Claudia Durst Johnson states in her book In To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries that the work "invites the conclusion that we reach some sense of self-identity by our encounters with other forces, that is, with forces alien to our commonplace lives. As a result of these encounters, we break the cultural and psychological barriers that imprison us and come to embrace a larger world" (p.72). Meaning that the process of Othering is purely subjective to the white folk, ‘the Other’ is black; to the black people, ‘the Other’ is the whites and so on the circle is endless.

In To Kill a Mockingbird the children began a journey of self discovery and to do so they must understand the word surrounding them in this case Maycomb community but this book can be portrayed not only as exceptional story but an incarnation of Michel Foucault's Panopticon; the supposedly demonstration of power in society present as Foucault states “we live in a society where panopticism reigns” (215) applying it on Maycomb County will challenges the idea that the Panopticon is a flawless creation of repression from which no one can flee, at least not without consequences

Social otherness in mainly created out of invisible lines as he said f inclusion and exclusion, in To Kill a Mockingbird era those lines rule the lives of people and categorized them into groups and sections according to their race, gender, social status …, these distinctions carry on a high rate of dominance and authority, giving the control to the people in charge so they can socially supervise the other categories according to the disciplines they force. He suggested that “contemporary society deserves the name of disciplinary society” disciplines comes from the distribution of power thus by othering people you will be the one holding the control. Panopticism is very present in Maycomb County; everyone must act according to the traditional arranged disciplines and not sway away from