Comparing Malala Yousafzai's Courage to that of Characters in Novels by Harper Lee and Rebecca Skloot

Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl, was shot and wounded by the Taliban. At eleven years old, Malala, and all other Pakistani women were told they could no longer receive any sort of education. Malala would not remain quiet, she wanted to be taught, and she made sure everyone knew the cruelty of the situation. On October 8, as Malala and many other children were riding a bus home, the bus was stopped by a masked Taliban gunman who shot Malala in the head and neck. Malala survived the shot and even wrote a book later on. This situation is much like what some of the characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, go through. Lee and Skloot demonstrate that restriction from society and others leads to injustice.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, injustice is seen in many aspects of the book. Scout is a victim of its wrath throughout some of the novel. When Jem, Atticus and Scout all go to Finch’s Landing for Christmas, Scout hits Francis after he calls Atticus a Negro-lover. Uncle Jack punishes Scout after hearing only Francis’s side. “I took a deep breath. ‘Well, in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it - you just lit right into me.’” (Lee 113). Uncle Jack’s ignorance to the conflict he created makes Scout mad because he did not ask her side of the story. Just because at first look, Scout seemed like the antagonist, Uncle Jack jumped the gun and punished her without full knowledge, causing an unfair situation. Another time that, again, Scout was introduced to injustice is when she is first starting school. Miss Caroline, her teacher, discovers that Scout can read and informs her to have her dad stop teaching her. The ...

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...l over the world, they came from a live woman.’” (Skloot 91). Henrietta did not receive the thanks she deserved from all the doctors or scientists because they just thought of HeLa cells, as nothing but cells. They did not even blink an eye at the thought of the cells coming from a real person. All in all, through disconcern from society, Skloot shows that injustice haunts many people.

Both Harper Lee and Rebecca Skloot reveal that innocent people suffer from the injustice society inflicts upon them. Injustice is seen in many forms and affects people in their own ways, each way just as bad. Malala Yousafzai knows this first hand, as she experienced it with a shot to the head. To conclude, the discrimination around people is what makes these injustices possible.

Works Cited

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot