As Benjamin Franklin once said, “The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.” This quote means that the harshest of the laws can bring the biggest injustice to citizens. In To Kill A Mockingbird society looks down on African Americans and defending African Americans is just like someone killing someone in this type of society. The problem is how African Americans got treated so differently and poorly in the all-white court system and in everyday life. Also, how people defending an African American got treated much differently than whites. (COUNTERCLAIM HERE) Harper Lee illustrates the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird by developing tolerant characters.
Mrs. Dubose treats the kids very poorly, just when they are just walking past her house. In the book Scout and Jem are walking through town and passed Mrs. Duboses house. As Mrs. Dubose says to Scout, “Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon Mrs. Dubose.” Mrs. Dubose is being rude to Scout just because Scout says hey to her. This is injustice because Scout has never done anything to her except for being friendly while walking by. Scout though does not know that Mrs. Dubose is dying and trying to not take morphine. In the book Atticus is defending an African American in court and no one likes that including Mrs. Dubose. Mrs. Dubose shouts rude comments to Scout and Jem about Atticus, “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for.” This should not have been said because Atticus is trying to be a good person. Back then even talking to an African American can lead you into terrible trouble. In the book after a rude comment Mrs. Dubose had made Jem had cut all of her flowers with a baton that he had got for Scout. After this happe...
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...Walter is trash. Walter just got labeled trash because of his social class. Aunt Alexandra is being very rude about all of this. The court case had been very unfair and because of this Scout started to realize the unfairness in society. “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads- they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts when it’s a white mans word againist a black man’s word, the white always wins. They’re ugly, but they are the facts of life.” This is not justice because no matter how much evidence there is that African Americans is not guilty the African American will still be the one who is getting blamed while the white person gets off the hook. As Benjamin Franklin had said the strictest law of not acceptiong some people in society becomes the biggest injustice that could happen.
Works Cited
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In addition to being a lawyer, Atticus enjoys being a father to Jem and Scout. When Jem and Scout found out that their father would be defending a black person, they knew immediately that there would be much controversy, humiliation from the people of Maycomb and great difficulty keeping Tom alive for the trial. It was not long when Atticus had to leave the house very late to go to jail, where Tom was kept because many white people wanted to kill him. Worrying about their father, Jem and Scout sneak out of the house to find him. A self-appointed lynch mob has gathered on the jail to take justice into their own hands. Scout decides to talk to Walter Cunningham, one of the members of the mob. She talks about how her father Atticus thought that "entailments are bad "(154 ) " and that his boy Walter is a real nice boy and tell him I said hey"(154). Upon hearing this, the mob realized that Atticus cannot be all bad if he has such a nice daughter as Scout. Atticus, with some unexpected help from his children, faces down the mob and cause them to break up the potential lynching of the man behind bars. Having gone to a black church earlier, the children found out that Tom is actually a kind person, church-going and a good husband and father to his children.
Intriguing. That is the word that comes to mind when reading Harper Lee's novel “To kill a Mockingbird”. The novel is filled with so many different view points, attitudes, feelings, etc. all in which, bring to mind a wide range of feelings. In particular, in reading chapters 8-14 of this novel, you really get an extra bit of insight into the “intriguing” sense of the characters. To be specific, in the following chapters, we get to know more about each character a little more. One person, in particular, who these chapters are seem to focus on, is Atticus Finch. Atticus is one of the main characters, father of Jem and Scout Finch, and is the main inspiration to my idea of being intriguing. In chapters 8-14 of this book, there are so many interesting and mind-boggling passages that it is hard to decide which ones really get your hair standing up most. For example, A passage that was pretty interesting was “...nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebodys favoring negroes over and above themselves” (Lee 68). It has
In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Lee uses discrimination and injustice to tell us readers that justice should be blind when it comes to gender, race and the way you live life. In the story many people are being discriminated because of their race , gender and even age. During the book we have many examples of discrimination especially in the case with Tom Robinson we have many examples of how many people were and still discriminate African Americans.
Over the decades a lot in the world has changed. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and the movie Freedom Writers by Richard LaGravenese. Tell the stories about how one ethnic group rules over the other nationalities. Making it known that they have more power. This resulted from segregation because of their colored skin. They both have different situations. The “FreeWriters” is about a classroom full of kids who have poor situations, and have to defend for their lives because of their nationalities. Their teacher inspires and teaches them respect, that they all can make it in life, and that they're all equal no matter what anyone says.It was a real story taken place in La, California in the 1990s. The book “To Kill A Mockingbird” is about between whites and blacks. It takes place in Maycomb, Alabama back in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This book is fiction but based on reality.
Jill McCorkle's Ferris Beach, a contemporary novel, shares numerous characteristics with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel written in the 1960's. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, McCorkle's novel documents the life of a young girl in a small southern town. The two narrators, Kate Burns and Scout Finch, endure difficult encounters. A study of these main characters reveals the parallels and differences of the two novels. Jill McCorkle duplicates character similarities and rape from Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird to show the reader how young girls think and develop.
This is relevant today because repeatedly we see black males and females never shown justice in court, as a source tells, “it explains to readers who don't understand why black people are afraid of the criminal justice system, because we have not gotten, historically, justice in that system. And Harper Lee was the first person to tell that to the largest group of Americans - 30 million strong, who've been her readers - in the most polite and quiet way that many of them were willing to listen to. " Why Does 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Still Have Such An Impact? To Kill a Mockingbird shows that even in the democratic society of the United States, there was discrimination and prejudice in the nineteen-thirties. Although this has been reduced there, in many other countries and regions these conditions still exist for minority groups.
I chose to write a thank you letter because it seem to fit my writing style. This fits my skills because I’m not a big writing person and this feels like it was the easiest for me to do. The easiest part about writing a letter is knowing the characters well enough that you can talk about their personality and how they have impacted Maycomb. The most challenging part is going to be citing the story at least 3 times because I’m not going to know exactly where a character said something or remembering an episode. This project will help me with improving my skills by learning how to write a more complex letter and with higher level words. I want to improve my skills on citing the text by going back and finding 3 or even more events or dialogues from
As the American people’s standards and principles has evolved over time, it’s easy to forget the pain we’ve caused. However, this growth doesn’t excuse the racism and violence that thrived within our young country not even a century previous. This discrimination, based solely on an ideology that one’s race is superior to another, is what put many people of color in miserable places and situations we couldn’t even imagine today. It allowed many Caucasian individuals to inflict pain, through both physical and verbal attacks, and even take away African Americans ' God given rights. In an effort to expose upcoming generations to these mass amounts of prejudice and wrongdoing, Harper Lee 's classic novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, tells the story of
In 1960, a novel was written to outline injustices and racism against those who were innocent, though unfairly judged because of social expectations and prejudiced beliefs. This novel not only presented these issues, but is also considered a revolutionary piece of literature, still being read by many people today, more than 50 years later. The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, has caused some controversy about the intents of the book and the way certain people or groups are presented. Whether To Kill a Mockingbird as a narrative outshines the issue it presents is a debatable argument. However, I believe that the narrative of the novel supports the concerns exhibited for numerous reasons. In what follows, some of these are presented: the historical
Mrs. Dubose is a strong example of people are not what they seem in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. When Scout is explaining Mrs. Dubose’s characterisation, as a cruel old lady. As Scout is walking past Mrs. Dubose while she is on her front porch she thinks: “Jem and I hated her. If she was on the porch when we passed, we would be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behavior. And given a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up. Which was always nothing” (Lee 132). Jem and Scout hates Mrs. Dubose for her rude comments and actions toward them and their father, however
Fortunate was I, to grow up in a rural community where almost everybody was the same. I blended in, was like almost all others. I have always felt I received a good education that prepared me fairly well for college and later family life. However, I had no idea how others in the world lived. I grew up in a nice part of town, where everybody I knew was married, middle-class, went to either the “big Lutheran” or Catholic church in town, and the vast majority had occupations relating to agriculture. Fast forward, I’m now a junior high social studies and science teacher living in that same small town. Here, a few ideals guide my teaching practice. The first is to instill a quality work ethic in the students; the second, to teach them to do
To Kill a Mockingbird "I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them." – Miss Maudie The quote above states that Atticus Finch was a man who did unpleasant things, but this quote is false. Miss Maudie had every good intention when she told Jem and Scout this and her point was taken in the way she intended it to be taken by the children. Her point could have been better worded if the portion that reads "our unpleasant jobs" were replaced with "what is right." Atticus did unpleasant things only because he knew that they were the right thing to do. Miss Maudie told the children about their father in this way only to avoid saying that the rest of the town was wrong.
Mrs. Dubose is overtly racist, representing the ‘bad’ part of the town. In chapter 11 of To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Dubose repeatedly insults Jem and Scout because their father, Atticus Finch, is defending a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape. The theme is revealed in chapter 11.
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest” Ellie Wiesel. Readers may find the amount of injustice in Harper lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird a little shocking. This could be why it’s such a popular book. People like the suspense of knowing someone’s right, but still being found guilty for something they did not do. There are many times throughout the book when people are powerless to prevent injustice but they still protest it. This shows that even when people unjustly punish there should always be someone to protest it. The theme of injustice is a common one in harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, whether it be through racism, misinformation, or Arrogance.
The ideas put forth by To Kill a Mockingbird support that life of the African-American society in the U.S. was made just as bad by the white society after slavery was abolished. There was little change in the African-American community’s quality of life. Even though some political rights for the African American community were established, they still suffered as the white community manipulated how those rights took place. They also went to great lengths to make all other aspects of the African-American society’s lives miserable, whether it be socially, economically, religiously, or in the case of law.