To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

If a poisoned seed is planted, an unhealthy plant will grow. Its offspring will be rooted in poison, and if it is not destroyed nothing healthy will grow. Maycomb is like a venomous plant, raising its young to hate one another and divide themselves among castes. The town is unwilling to destroy the old, to create beauty and peace from the ruins. Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning historical fiction novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, describes the life of a young southern woman in the 1930’s, and the many obstacles she and her family face. Her father is one of the few citizens who are trying to cure Maycomb of its disease by defending Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. Lee’s tale incorporates how Maycomb’s caste system affects the town, and the ostracization of Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley, Dolphus Raymond, and Walter Cunningham Jr., because they defy the mainstream of what society expects from them. It also describes the lesson Jem, Scouts older brother, and her learn about how the ideas planted in the town are morally wrong. As Maycomb tries to harbor the values of the old southern traditions, the town is slowly ripped apart by the inescapable bonds of the social caste system, racism that clouds the judgment of the most well meaning citizen, and misjudgment and cruelty to the outsiders.

Old southern traditions were the glue that kept Maycomb together; however, though they solidified Maycomb’s society, they separated equals in character into unjust social class. The existence of a social order to separate blacks from whites or the social elites from the trash is not original, but the existence of these systems signifies Maycomb’s refusal to let go of the past (Erisman 42). Lee portrays how the soci...

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...everely disagreed what the Mercenary women were saying about Atticus. She did not yell or pitch a fit but simply kept her mouth shut and gave them a steely glare thus ending the conversation. Scout learned that sometime when a person “want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language" (Lee 143). Scout understands that class or a rumor does not define a person but his or her character towards others. She knows that there is no difference been the citizens because ‘there's just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 259). Even though scout comes to grips that the world is not a perfect place, she tries to perfect it by keeping everyone in the bounds of equality. Scout is one of the first to start planting new roots for the town of Maycomb so that future generations can follow in her and Atticus’s footsteps and slowly make a change.