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Theme Of Social Inequality In To Kill A Mockingbird

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In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee demonstrates the small, imaginary town, the Maycomb County, as a place where racism and social inequality happens in the background of 1930s America. Not only the segregation between whites and blacks, but also the poor lived in a harsh state of living. As Scout, the young narrator, tells the story, Lee introduces and highlights the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb County by using various characters such as Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Mayella Ewell. Firstly, Harper Lee portrays Boo Radley as a victim of social inequality through adjectives and metaphor in the phrase, “There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten;” ‘Long jagged scar that ran across his face’ tells us that Boo Radley has stereotype about his appearance, which forces to imagine Boo as a scary and threatening person. The phrase, ‘yellow and rotten’ make the readers think as if Boo Radley is poor and low in a social hierarchy, as he cannot afford to brush his teeth. Although Jem who said this sentence, did not exactly know how Boo looks like, he believes that Boo is inferior and being to be ridiculed, which indicates that the prejudice is ingrained into the children of Maycomb. Lee used prejudice to create mysterious feeling about Boo and shows he is being mocked and teased by the children. Later in the story, Boo is shown as a kind and real person as he mends Jem’s
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