To Kill a Mockingbird a Story Build Upon Inequality
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Course
American literature
Institution
2
Book
To Kill A Mockingbird
This is a grade 10 culminating for the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. It takes a look at how racial, social, and female inequality are present in the novel and in todays society. It is 1300 words, follows MLA formatting, and earned a 97% grade level.
Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird is an American classic. The novel is built upon the
prevalence of human inequality. It takes place in 1930s Alabama in the small town of Maycomb.
In Maycomb racial, social, and female inequality is in the forefront of their society. The novel
brings to the limelight the inequality the human race pushed upon people in the 1930s and still
continues to today.
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is set in 1930s Alabama. This is almost seventy years
after slavery was abolished in America. Even this long after the thirteenth amendment was
signed, white supremacy was still pervasive. The ubiquitous white supremacy created rampant
racial inequality. The Tom Robinson trial was fabricated strictly on racial inequality. Tom
Robinson was charged with raping a white girl. He was found guilty of this because he was black
and found in a white women’s home. Atticus Finch clearly proved Tom Robinson innocent.
However, as Reverend Sykes voices “I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in the favor of a colored
man over a white man….” (Lee 279). What Reverend Sykes is proclaiming is that in the history
of Maycomb a coloured man has never won a trial case against a white man. The defense lawyer
of the trial, states in his closing argument “in our courts all men are created equal.” (274).
Unfortunately, this is clearly not the case. The jury of the trial abided so tightly to the Jim Crow
laws that they could not let a clearly innocent man win. Another, example of racial inequality is
, how blacks and whites were not allowed to intermarry. During Atticus Finch’s closing argument,
he adds “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is
unspeakable: she kissed a black man.” (272). In 1930s Alabama, it was a sin to have interracial
relations as whites were superior to blacks. Mayella Ewell accused Tom of raping her because
she had to disguise her sin. “Swedish Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal noted in the early 1940s that
the closer the association of a type of interracial behaviour is to sexual and social intercourse on
an equalitarian basis, the higher it ranks among the forbidden things.” (Wallenstein 371).
Furthermore, the Tom Robinson trial has an abundance of similarities to the Scottsboro trials.
Both cases centered around black men being convicted of raping white women. In both cases the
men were innocent and charged guilty because they were Negros. During the Scottsboro trial the
judge of the trial said “We [Scottsboro boys] were guilty and a trial was a waste of time and
money for niggers.” (Bellamy 28). The courtroom is where all men are equal. This can not be
true as even the Judge was prejudice. Undoubtably there is severe racial inequality in Alabama in
the 1930s. One race is not superior to another. Yet, this is not what the human race believes.
Equally evident as racial inequality is social inequality. The people of Maycomb are
classed by family name, land, and repute in the community. These factors greatly affect how you
are perceived in the community. A prime example of social inequality is when Aunt Alexandra
was explaining how certain families have streaks. She “obliquely expressed, that the longer a
family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.” (Lee 173). What Alexandra
means is that the more history and relevance your family has to Maycomb the better of people
you would be. This is discrimination based purely off of social class. Scout doesn’t believe Aunt
Alexandra as that “makes the Ewells fine folks,” (173). Also, Scout at a young age already has
her feet soaked in the ways of social inequality. She attests to this when Walter Cunningham is
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