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Examples Of Hypocrisy In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Maycomb is a small, and seemingly welcoming town from the outside; however, it’s actually full of racist men and women chasing the same goal, killing Tom Robinson. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee creates a story about a family living in Maycomb in the 1930’s.Scout and Jem find out their father, a lawyer named Atticus, has been picked to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. Although Atticus knew they wouldn’t win, he tried his best to defend an innocent man from a harsh world. To Kill a Mockingbird demonstrates the horrors of a scared and racist town using literary devices. To begin with, on the night of the jailhouse, Tom Robinson had recently moved to the prison at Maycomb. Atticus thinks it’s a good idea to stay with him in case someone tries to harm him. Soon after, a group of white men come barrelling over with pitchforks. This part uses imagery to show that all white men, even the working …show more content…
This scene expresses the hypocrisy in the book towards black people and racism. Lee writes Scout saying, “‘...I heard her say it’s time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home--”’(331). After a lesson in school about Hitler and how cruel it was of them to persecute Jews, Scout feels it’s weird for her to be doing the same thing to black people. The terrible thing about it also is that Miss Gates believes that she’s not doing anything wrong. This scene expresses the hypocrisy in the book towards black people and racism. It’s hypocrisy to shame and judge a person that does the same thing to others. Thinking this behaviors way contributes to the theme of the story, because this makes people fear others and want them to be

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