Reflection on To Kill a mockingbird

This thesis presents Harper Lee’s view about prejudice, race racism and cultural clashes of social life in To Kill A Mockingbird. The aim of the thesis is to analyze deeply about the concept of prejudice and racism and cultural clashes of Harper Lee from the point of view of Scout as the main character in this novel. The discussion began by analyzing intrinsic and extrinsic elements. The intrinsic elements novel such as character and characterization, conflict and setting and the extrinsic element taken from the social conflict America at glance in 1930s. From the intrinsic and extrinsic elements, the reflection of Harper Lee’s view a struggle of a white man who defend a nigger which is in that time defending nigger such a disgrace for white people from the social judgments. The methods used are library research method and approach. The library research method is to gain information related to discussion. The approaches used here are structural and sociological approach. Structural approach is used to analyze character and characterization, setting, conflict, while sociological approach was applied to analyze Racial Prejudice in this novel. The result of the analysis shows that Scout as the main character is described as a person who is naïve, understanding girl, smart, emotional, lovely. She experiences the internal conflict, person against herself. The external conflict overwhelm Scout against some others characters and the society. In this novel Harper Lee’s shows her point of view on prejudice ,racism and cultural anarchy. She tries to tell people in the novel if Alabama in 1930s was full of prejudice and racism action from white people to black people. So, because of the prejudice black people always become the victim or person that blamed as a criminal when there was a case between white and black before or after the court. And the way the mocking voice of race people were sung by the narration of Harper Lee through her novel To Kill A Mockingbird.

of the Novel Two plots run through the book To Kill a Mockingbird. The first is the mystery of the Radley Place and its inhabitant Boo Radley. The children work throughout the first part of the novel to bring him out or to see him inside the house.

I argue that works of literature which explore historical moments should be considered as valuable historical artefacts and sources, on the basis that such literature can reveal more about the lived experience of reality than a factual history. Specifically, I assert that Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a historical source for the Long Civil Rights Movement. This “long” Civil Rights Movement more accurately reveals the larger set of goals that African Americans sought to achieve during their struggle for freedom than the timeline of the popular Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). The popular Civil Rights Movement diminishes the history of grassroots organising and protest that precedes its short timeline, and fails to acknowledge the extent of racial discrimination and white violence that occurred in the early 1900s and continues today. In depicting the reality of racial inequality and growing protest in the Depression-era South, Lee's novel is evidence of a Long Civil Rights Movement.

2015

In this paper the author argues for a “re-visioning” of two young adult literature texts by examine the ways in which race is constructed/deconstructed within To Kill a Mockingbird and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. The piece begins by examining how the books are perceived in mass culture, then leads into an analysis of how race is (de)constructed through key scenes related to family, history and land ownership. By examining the two pieces of literature in tandem, differing ideologies become apparent. Implications for the teaching of these texts in light of these ideologies, the selective tradition, and authenticity in the selection of multicultural texts conclude this piece. See https://journals.shareok.org/index.php/studyandscrutiny/issue/view/19

To discuss race and class issues in America is to venture into an area fraught with perils. It may well be that “class and racial discrimination at a workplace or on the streets” are the toughest, slipperiest opponents in the lexicon of American history. But failure to consider racial discrimination in our society will contribute to what I will call sentimental solidarity in the midst of diversity. The relationship between segregation, black political experiences, and civic culture in urban America is neither simple nor straightforward. And this is what the two books we are analyzing today seems to address. The two books that set the context of today’s discussion are To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. Where does Ohio come into this, especially between 1933 and 1955 when the To Kill a Mockingbird was written? Does Go Set a Watchman advance the argument or bring to the table those issues better than To Kill a Mockingbird making the publisher reject the manuscript when Harper Lee first wrote it?

It is a widely accepted fact that literature reflects society. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is the reflection of 1930's America. Lee meticulously captures the issues, beliefs, prejudices of the Americans in this time period in the setting of a fictitious town, Maycomb, Alabama. Maycomb is a small town of close-knit families living for decades in that town. Though this is her first and the only novel (1920) till she would go on to publish Go Set a Watchman (2015) in 2015, Mockingbird received rave reviews and critical acclaim for her novel. Mockingbird received the Pulitzer Prize and went on to become a classic American novel which is prescribed in American Schools. The narrative is partly autobiographical as it is vaguely based on the incidents Lee witnessed in her hometown in 1936. The novel though deals with a very critical issue, racial prejudice, is simultaneously warm and educative of human values. The protagonist, Scout Finch, learns her lessons of compassion and courage at the hands of her father, Atticus Finch and their domestic help, Calpurnia. The present paper deals with the portrayal of women in Mockingbird. Lee portrays her women as strong, assertive, ethical and nurturing. Simultaneously, we have certain social characters who are stereotypes and the accuser, Mayella of Tom Robinson, a negative character. It is interesting to note the strong roles, both positive and negative, the women characters play in this novel. The paper makes a note of the strikingly contrasting characteristics and attempts to study the autobiographical elements behind the portrayal of women characters in the Mockingbird.

Atticus Finch has two kinds of integrity, but only one of them is genuinely admirable. On one hand, he is rightly admired for standing up for the things he values. On the other hand, he is also praised for being “the same in his house as he is on the public streets.” But we shouldn’t praise him for this. Atticus has achieved a kind of harmony between his identity as a lawyer and other identities like parent, neighbor, citizen, and moral person. This is a good thing for him, but it isn’t morally admirable. In fact, integrating one’s identities can sometimes make it harder to act virtuously. For example, the way that Atticus organizes his identities around his commitment to the justice system prevents him from noticing his only chance to save Tom Robinson’s life. "To Kill a Mockingbird" shows that it is sometimes better to have tension in our identities. Far from presenting Atticus as the sole paradigm of ethical goodness, it shows other characters who are admirable because they are not like Atticus at all. The identities of characters like Calpurnia, Maudie, and Scout others are conflicted or divided, and these tensions allow them to be admirable in ways that Atticus is not. They can cross social boundaries, subvert their own social roles, and radically criticize their community precisely because their identities are fragmented or in flux. This should be inspiring to lawyers, and to the legal ethicists who have long worried that lawyers’ roles will cause schisms in their identities. Sometimes tension in the self is exactly what we need to be good.

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most widely taught texts in language arts classrooms through the English-speaking world and is greatly valued by many readers today for its depiction of youth grappling with racism in the American South of the Depression Era. However, the novel’s subtle and sustained critique of public education has remained largely unrecognized. This essay identifies in the novel an underlying nostalgia for the past homeschooling of Southern white aristocracy as well as disdain for modern public institutions and for the democratic values that those institutions seek to instill in youth. Keywords: secondary education, home education, reconstruction, education of African Americans, pauper schools