In that time, there were many heavy social standards and one of those standards was accepting Jim Crow. One example of one person not being able to combat Jim Crow due to the social pressure was in the book To Kill A Mockingbird. One of the characters, Dolphus Raymond, liked hanging out with black people and was friends with them. He knew that there was pressure against it, so he took the cowardly way out by pretending to be drunk as an excuse to hang out with them. The fictional character of Mr. Raymond is a great embodiment of the mental state of the silent few in America that knew that Jim Crow was wrong, but didn’t have the means or willpower to end it.
Family is important to you right? Yes a lot of people would do anything to defend their family or stop someone that is slandering your family. The book To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee describes the Finch family who lives in Maycomb and Mr. Finch defends a black man named Tom Robinson. Chapter 9 describes the problem between Scout and Finch (Scout’s cousin) and Scout uses violence to defend her father. This problem really helps me come of age understanding it is not right to use violence when defending family.
Mayella Ewell comes from a poor family who is viewed in the Maycomb society as “white trash.” The Finch family has to face harsh criticism in the heavily racist Maycomb because of Atticus decision to help Tom. The soundtrack of the movie is important so the songs I choose are “Strange Fruit”, “Tearin’ up My Heart”, and “Eye of the Sparrow” which are good choices for the soundtrack. The first song I choose is “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday. It is a dark profound song about the lynching of African Americans in the southern United States during the Jim Crow Era. It was a protest song that Billie Holiday very rarely performed due to threats.
Nonetheless, both men may not be so different after all. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the moral empathy is not adequately represented towards other Maycomb County folks. People are just people and no one is naturally different from anyone else, excluding the fact that there are some people who take advantage of their power. Early in the novel, the author introduces the readers to a divided society in which both, the young and old, are heavily
Another tie between these laws and the book is that Tom Robinson broke one of these laws. One law states that a black person should never imply that a white person is lying, well the trial is about how Tom Robinson is stating that Mayella is lying about him raping her. These laws show how horrible the black people were treated and this inspired Harper Lee to write To Kill a
Bob Ewell was so racist that he said, “I seen that black n-word yonder ruttin on my Mayella!” In this sentence, he was talking about Tom Robinson, an innocent black man that Bob accused of raping his daughter. Many court cases were not honest back then because those who were black and attended a court case usually lost regardless of the
Morals and values often control one’s choices, and sometimes these decisions affect someone’s entire life. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a prime example of the importance of morals. During the 1930s in the southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, a non-racist, white lawyer, Atticus Finch, passes on his beliefs to his children, and they use his teachings to overcome challenges in their life. Atticus’s children’s, Jem and Scout, first encounter with an obstacle is when Atticus is tasked with defending an African American in court against a racist man named Bob Ewell that falsely accuses him of raping his daughter. As a result, members of their community, specifically an elderly woman named Mrs. Dubose, become angry at Atticus, and Bob Ewell even tries to murder Atticus’s children.
In this essay, Metress speaks on how Atticus has some flaws in To Kill a Mockingbird; for example, the only thing Atticus does for change in his community was defend Tom for no charge and he did so to his best ability. Also, Atticus, when describing why he chooses to not turn down the case, uses the word “I” more than anything else, suggesting he did it for himself more than he did it for Tom or for anyone else. Metress quotes Freedman in his essay: “Here is a man who does not voluntarily use his training and skills - not once ever - to make the slightest change in the pervasive social injustice of his own
Author Harper Lee, in her novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”, depicts a court trial in which Atticus Finch, a Maycomb County lawyer, attempts to defend an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, who was falsely accused of rape and beating by a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Finch’s purpose is to prove Tom’s innocence to the court and avoid an inaccurate conviction. He adopts a deliberate tone in order to rule the jury’s speculation in favor of Robinsons guiltlessness. Atticus begins his argument by contrasting social moralities versus actual law. He describes the actions of Mayella Ewell, the accuser, as, “Something that in [their] society is unspeakable,” because she was white, and, “tempted a Negro”(231).
The Portrayal of ‘Relative Justice’ in To Kill a Mockingbird The correlation of justice and prejudice dwell as a perpetuating conflict in the United States. Case in point is racism, which is deeply analyzed on the 1960 Pulitzer-awarded novel, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee focalizes this novel upon the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man charged by the rape of a white girl, Mayella Ewell. Racial prejudice is thoroughly presented in the novel, but what originally transpired as discrimination evolves into an inferno of injustice, particularly in the debasement and death of one of the ‘Mockingbirds,’ the impoverishment of his family, and the humiliation of his race. The whole novel is presented by the protagonist, Scout, as a tomboyish naive adult retrospectively recalling her early ages.