“To Kill a Mockingbird” Paper

Humans are smart but foolish at the same time. They are considered clever because they act by logical thinking not based on their instincts. However, that logical thinking can also portray humans as foolish creatures. Prejudice is the main factor that makes humans look doltish because it locks people themselves in a small cage by defining their lives. Using that smart brain, all humans can do is putting themselves in a small cage, this makes it hard to believe that they are considered the most intelligent species of all. Harper lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, demonstrates this human nature of prejudice throughout her book. Especially, she uses three character’s lives to support her statement: Calpurnia, a black women who must hide herself from others, Tom Robinson, an innocent black man who ends his life as a dirty criminal and Dolphus Raymond, a white man pretends to be an drunken man.
The novel takes place in Maycomb, a fictional small town in Alabama. In the town, the segregation of whites and blacks is considered normal. To fit in the norm, Calpurnia, the cook of two young siblings, Jem and Scout, conceals her intelligence because people expect her to be a typical, uneducated black woman. After service at Calpurnia’s church, Scout asks Calpurnia why does she talk like a nigger with other blacks. Calpurnia responds, “You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.” Blacks despise educated folks because they have something that blacks can never had the chance to obtain. For these people, the education is not only allowed but it’s also a luxury they can’t have. When ...

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...m a fake reason. Alcohol. Because Dolphus was too weak to convince others to break their prejudice, he changes himself instead of changing others.
“The air is only place safe from prejudice.” This quote by Bessie Coleman explains the most significant theme in the book. Prejudice forms people’s lives and nobody can escape from it because it comes with human itself. In her novel, Harper lee shows that the whole human society is swallowed by the prejudice even though humans are the one who created it. The prejudice is certainly powerful but it’s not undefeatable. If people realize the prejudice is nothing but just a imaginary limitation that they have created, they will be able to fly like a bird who escaped from its metal cage. Humans will need to work on understanding their own nature of prejudice until they deserve the title as the most intelligent species of all.