What Is Family Distinctions In To Kill A Mockingbird

Atticus went on to explain, “Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit them hardest.” (Lee, 20) People in Maycomb understand that everyone lives differently and they are in different economic standings, but that does not always change the way people

The Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world was at its lowest point in 1933, the beginning of the book. Over 15 million Americans were unemployed, and half of the country's banks had failed, malnutrition was a big problem for children due to their parents not being able to afford food for them, and many families were evicted from the houses or lands that they lived on. During this period, most African Americans worked on farms that were owned by white landowners and lived in rural areas. While life before the Great Depression was already arduous for African Americans, their living conditions worsened due to the fact that the farmers they worked for lost their land. As previously mentioned, food prices had deflated causing farmers to not be able to make a profit off of their land.

It didn’t help that the slave duty was at a whopping twenty percent. This only brought the farmers into more debt with which their tobacco could not render enough profit to get them out of. According to William Allason, the poor farmers were dedicated to lowering the duty on slaves as low as possible as opposed to shutting down the slave trade altogether, for the farmers needed hands to cultivate their product. (Holton, 71) Britain sided with the gentry’s opponents which were the poor farmers. This example of camaraderie between the British and the poor Virginians establishes the farmers’ stance on independence; despite the troubles they have had with the economy, the poor farmers are so bad off that they would rather turn to Britain (home of the Parliament that imposed sanctions negatively affecting the economy) for aide in lowering the duty on slaves.

Haiti has had a challenging history, from having an ongoing political oppression, to soil erosion which impacts its food supply for overpopulation in a small country, and the lack of a well developed education program which leads to illiteracy amongst the small country. The life inherited of an average Haitian concludes to daily misery and hardships, where this is unimaginable to people of a richer nation, such as the United States, who actually contributed in the past to their difficult life. Also, these life struggles are also not felt by the rare three percent of the population who have actually obtained the riches that were blessed by inheritance into an upper class

It’s the sad relativity and an unpleasant fact that even today, there are tons of veterans who are living in poverty. The word poverty could be defined as an extremely bad state of being poor, but there is so much more to the word poor. Our veterans know the real meaning of poor and understand the real concept of the sacrifice. They sacrifice their youth for the service of the country and in expense they allow their nation to keep the freedom that they rightfully deserve. There are administrations out there that are supposed to help our veterans, for example the Veterans Administration Hospitals but it’s doing nothing but showing a negative outlook of our government and shows the debt owed to our veterans.

As she states, “The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till his shoe shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit but he’ll never be like Jem.” Alexandra thinks of Walter as low class and how he'll never rise up to the stance to be like Jem, who is richer and civilized. Aunt Alexandra states further how “Finch women aren't interested in those kind of people,” mainly referring to the Cunninghams. She forbids Scout from being friends with Walter because he is of lower class and shouldn't associate with trashy folks. She even tells Atticus to fire Cal, the housemaid and mainly not because of race, but because she is uncivilized and if she is around the Finches, then they themselves would become uncivilized if one were to be amongst

The quality of society is very much determined by how it treats its lowest of individuals. This tenet is seen throughout American history and is still seen today. This story has undertones of political wrongdoings in almost the whole book. George and Lennie are considered some of the lowliest people during the depression. They were migrant farm hands that had no place to go.

In the book it was well known that a certain family in the town that got treated very poorly because of how they got their income and how much they got from it compared to every other person in town. Life in the 1930’s compared to the book and real life are on par. African Americans were treated very poorly for all the work they did and pay poorly as well. But also some families were entirely treated bad because of how much they made or what they did. Tolerance back then was a entire different ball game, Adults and kids looked down on most depending on wealth, skin color, or even by gender.

With further research on the topic it is made known that “Eighty percent of the country’s population lives in poverty” (Jackson, N/A). While exploring some of the reasons why Haiti is in such poverty it became clear that there is a connection between “papa doc” and “baby doc” and the Duvalier’s and how they contributed to Haiti’s poverty. “The Duvalier’s left Haiti economically decimated. A large number of educated professionals left the country during the Duvalier regimes, and the period that followed was so unstable, it was hard to lay down roots and build infrastructure. International investment was limited because it was an unreliable business environment” (Smith,

"But she wouldn't be here and you too if their parent weren't brave enough to take the risk, right?" She nodded sadly. I had to change the topic. "Alan's a child of broken law too. You know, magicians in my country are forbidden," I said.

Both, urban and rural Americans suffered during the Great Depression, but not in the same way. Many urban Americans had to deal with living in large communities of homes made out of cardboard boxes due to homelessness and lack of food in the cites (Schultz, 2013). At the same time, rural Americans were losing their farms due to the crops as a result of the drought. The Great Depression was a perfect time for the Communist Party of the United States to thrive, as a large portion of Americans believed that Capitalism was the cause of the whole thing. However, others such as Bonus Army, also used this time to further their cause of getting back pay for serving in World War I.