To Kill A Mockingbird (prejudice)

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 10th grade October 2001

download word file, 3 pages 1.0

To Kill A Mockingbird Prejudice is a detriment to one's rights of claims. In Harper Lee's enlightening novel To Kill A Mockingbird she shows how much prejudice was a problem in the Southern society it particularly was an issue for the colored people. Blacks had very little opportunity and say in the social order they lived in especially when it came to a colored person against a white person issue. The novel indicates three ways the population of Maycomb County shows prejudice towards each other such as the case of Tom Robinson, Arthur Radley, and Atticus Finch.

Jem and Scout knew not to kill mockingbirds because they were "harmless creatures who do nothing but sing for"� the enjoyment of others. "Therefore, it is very wrong to harm them."� In the story Tom Robinson is much like the mockingbird that has done nothing wrong but the citizens cannot see past the color of his skin and take his word over a white persons.

Even though it is physically impossible for Tom Robinson to have "taken advantage"� of May Ella because his "arm had gotten stuck in Mr. Dolphus Raymond's cotton gin when he was a boy and tore all the muscles loose from his bones"� there wasn't any way he could have overpowered her with one arm, but they still couldn't get past the color of his skin to see the truth.

Arthur Radley was a man in his thirties and barley ever seen outside his house, which leaves the towns people to their imaginations about what he does in there. The town spread false stories about Boo because it was a source of entertainment in a "tired old town"�. Miss Crawford a lover of gossip tells the rest of Maycomb County that Boo Radley "roams the streets at...