Abstract

Racist Manifestations in Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Hameed M. Daikh

Volume: 10 Issue: 4 2020

Abstract:

The book tackles the issue of racism from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl in Maycomb, Alabama. Lee wrote the novel during the 1950s, a time of extreme change for the civil rights movement. Clearly inspired by the uproar of blacks Lee began her novel and chose a small town in the south as the setting for her novel. Much of the novel is autobiographical and Lee built many of her characters around the people in her own life. The novel goes deep into the problems of a small town when a black man is accused of raping a white woman. The novel explores how natural racism is in Maycomb and how this mentality is hardly challenged. It gives a critical look into how the town functions and how the issues are allowed to exist. Lee uses her character Scout to help the reader experience racism and sexism for the first time. Scout’s innocence is supposed to make the reader be outraged at the injustices that is the American justice and social system have done. shows how natural racism and segregation seem to the adults in the novel. The Finch children learn of it and come to understand its meaning. And they are shocked to see the reality of their otherwise friendly home. To Kill A Mockingbird is the story of humanity learning to understand each other. As a reader, we see the world through the eyes of all children, who enter this world as the most pure of human beings. The realization of life’s hard lessons is taught through Scout and Jem Finch as they watch their father and community struggle with the Depression, racism, and the justice system of the Old South. We see the remnants of the old stereotypes toward blacks, women, and anyone who is considered to be an outsider.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.37648/ijrssh.v10i04.042

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