Examples Of Social Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee, the novel portrays examples of racial and social prejudice through the way mankind acts towards other people without even thinking. Within the book, Harper Lee raises awareness about racial, social prejudice and Loss of Innocence by the way people act towards African Americans and How children learn during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Throughout the novel written by Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird presents many examples of racism. In maycomb county, the majority of the citizens believe that the white race is superior against the black race. This can be seen when Atticus said, “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she

The citizens of maycomb country show social prejudice by the unjustified attitude towards an individual based on the individual's membership in a family or group. When Jem observes scout on the bed she says, “There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes”(374). The statement that Jem says about the separation of herself and the neighbors with the Cunninghams, Ewells, and the Negroes, shows the social prejudice of the town of maycomb. The age that children think that shows that the social diversity of people in maycomb is awful. Lastly, when Atticus is speaking with a finch he states, “You, Miss Scout Finch, are the common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of an exclusive society made up of Ewell's. In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’

Scout, Jem, and Dill have to deal with the conflict of having to experience new things as they grow up.Harper Lee also shows the good and evil in people and how the children learn and mature and to recognize human nature. In the the novel it reads, “Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em”(146). The current quote shows the loss of innocence in the novel because the adult doesn't answer the children's questions. Children learn the from older adults by asking questions, that's what children do, if they don't ask questions then they won't learn anything in life. When Miss Maudie answers Jem’s question about “it's a sin to do something” and Miss Maudie replied with “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”(152). The lost of innocence is shown in this quote by the way Jem says “I asked Miss Maudie about it” , that means that Jem wants answers as a child, without asking that question to Miss Maudie, Jem would've never learned about the mockingbird and why it's a sin to kill one. Harper Lee shows awareness in her