...“To Kill a Mocking Bird”: Teaching Tolerance Through Empathy Mary Ellyn Fogarty December 8, 2012 America in the mid 1950’s and 1960’s was undergoing a profound social metamorphosis. Events such as, in 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, with the Supreme Court ruling public school segregation illegal, which many believe sparked the civil rights era, in 1956 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, “precipitating the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr.” (To Kill a Mockingbird: Civil Rights Era, 2012), in 1957 federal troops were sent to Little rock Arkansas to protect nine African American students who were going white high school, per the court ordered desegregation of school, were challenging and for some forcing the way in which Americans lived, their beliefs and their treatment of African Americans that had been indoctrinated into their consciousness from the time they were born and many did not understand why this treatment was inappropriate, prejudice and unconstitutional. For some these changes were viewed as not an intrusion or criticism of their way of life but as...
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...The Help and To Kill a Mockingbird both have many similarities in how prejudice and empathy were displayed throughout the story. Both of the stories were set in the time of segregation in the Southern United States. It also shows the similarity of African-Americans as caretakers or housekeepers – Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird and Aibileen is only one of the examples in The Help. The settings were also similar, a part of a town was where whites lived and part of a town was where African-Americans lived, but there was a twenty-year difference of when the books took place. Prejudice was mainly shown throughout the storied by the way whites treated the African-Americans. In The Help, there were multiple examples of prejudice: African-Americans were not allowed to us the same bathroom as whites and how African-Americans could not use the same plates as whites. The acts of prejudice often stemmed from the fact that whites believed that African-Americans contained diseases, a statement that was supported by no facts. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the main example of prejudice was when Tom Robinson was convicted of raping a white girl when...
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...Literature is composed of archetypes and some archetypes are usually taken from the human experience of coming-of-age. Such is the case in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, where Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and her brother Jem live in their ordinary world of Maycomb, Alabama. However, Scout’s ordinary world changes when their father, Atticus Finch, defends a negro named Tom Robinson in court for being accused of raping a white girl named Mayella Ewell. Harper Lee has Scout’s learn about empathy, courage, and standing against prejudiced ideas from her role models in order to build Scout’s character to prepare for the inmost cave. Scout learns how to empathize with other from her roles models to take the first step out of the inmost cave. Early...
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...To Kill A Mockingbird Final Essay Today in society, many people empathize so they can further understand another's point of view. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows how empathy is the key to understanding somebody. Atticus really supports the theme of empathy. He wants Jem and Scout to live by empathizing for other people. Atticus and Scout use empathy to understand another character's point of view. Empathy is more than just saying sorry, it actually helps someone feel what another is feeling. Atticus really supports this throughout the novel. This is shown through the quote on page 39.“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk...
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...The benefit of reading is to learn from the character in the book.This is shown in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, “Reading and literature makes us smarter and nicer” by Annie Murphy Paul and Shami Sivasubramanian 2016 article, “Study Finds Reading Fiction Develops Empathy”. Harper Lee teaches us about prejudice, family and fear, through the eyes of the characters in the book. Firstly Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to a land of prejudice known as 1930’s Alabama. This teaches us how bad prejudice was back then and how much it has improved. “He despises Negroes, wont have one near him” is an example of prejudice. Atticus tells us that “there’s something in our world that make men lose their heads, they couldn’t be fair...
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...There are many individuals who believe that empathy is the solution to all of life’s problems; however, the truth of the matter is that empathy alone is not enough. This reality is demonstrated through various forms of literature. To begin with, in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose battles with a terminal illness and morphine addiction. Regardless of the amount of compassion the other characters may show towards her, it is not enough to save her life. Likewise, in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Mrs. Schächter suffers from terrifying hallucinations which cause her to scream relentlessly about fire and flames. Even if the other individuals on the train try to empathize with her, they are unable to help her...
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...also something Scout learns. She begins to realize that if the people would try to see the world through Mayella’s eyes, they might understand what brought her to commit her crime: isolation and loneliness. If the people looked through Tom’s eyes, they would understand the cruelty and injustice behind the Jim Crow Laws. In the last chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is attacked by Bob Ewell, who is killed when Scout is saved by Boo Radley. Once she arrives home after the attack, Scout finally recognizes Boo. She immediately begins making accommodations for his shyness, expressing her understanding of his introverted personality: “Feeling slightly unreal, I led [Boo] to the chair farthest from Atticus and Mr. Tate. It was in deep shadow. Boo would feel more comfortable in the dark” (272). Scout also understands completely when Heck Tate hints that it was Boo who killed Mr. Ewell: “‘Scout,’ he said, ‘Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?’ … ‘Yes sir, I understand,’ I reassured him. ‘Mr. Tate was right.’ … ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?’” (276). Scout knows how much it would pain Boo to be put in the spotlight,...
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...Maturity is essential for life and people go through different processes to achieve it. However many people never mature, and they lose themselves in childish worlds of ignorance. Empathy is an essential tool for reaching maturity, which is prevalent through Scout, a character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. In her novel, Scout matures by following her father’s advice to “climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (39) Examining how Scout treats the Cunninghams, Mayella Ewell and Boo Radley, empathy allowing for maturity is clear. The way Scout treats the Cunninghams shows Scout maturing through empathy. Near the beginning of the novel, Walter Cunningham’s behavior at the dinner table disgusts Scout. Throughout the meal, Scout acts...
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...THE GLENCOE LITERATURE LIBRARY Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee i Meet Harper Lee at the same university. In 1949, however, she withdrew and moved to New York City with the goal of becoming a writer. While working at other jobs, Lee submitted stories and essays to publishers. All were rejected. An agent, however, took an interest in one of her short stories and suggested she expand it into a novel. By 1957 she had finished a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. A publisher to whom she sent the novel saw its potential but thought it needed reworking. With her editor, Lee spent two and a half more years revising the manuscript. By 1960 the novel was published. In a 1961 interview with Newsweek magazine, Lee commented: Writing is the hardest thing in the world, . . . but writing is the only thing that has made me completely happy. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate and widespread success. Within a year, the novel sold half a million copies and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Within two years, it was turned into a highly acclaimed film. Readers admire the novel’s sensitive and probing treatment of race relations. But, equally, they enjoy its vivid account of childhood in a small rural town. Summing up the novel’s enduring impact in a 1974 review, R. A. Dave called To Kill a Mockingbird . . . a movingly human drama of the jostling worlds—of children and adults, of innocence and experience, of kindness and cruelty, of love and hatred, of humor...
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...justifies Atticus’s decisions and acts. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird a caucasian lawyer proves to Maycomb the city of racism what integrity really means. The novel takes place during the Great Depression which results to many citizens to be close minded considering Jim Crow laws were developing. Fortunately, Atticus a middle class lawyer disagrees with all acts of segregation and immorality. He sticks true to his values even though the citizens of Maycomb would be talking poorly of him for doing what is right and even correlating Atticus with derogatory terms. Atticus demonstrates the significance of acting with integrity and going against the crowd by...
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...sympathize with others is necessary to fix problems and progress as a civilization. In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird Atticus teaches his children, an essential lesson. Atticus states "You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them"(Lee). Lee further vindicates this statement through imagery and motif, concluding that, to truly know someone one must observe issues in their shoes. The motif of empathizing with another character's plights to better interpret their actions and the characters themselves is prevalent throughout Scout's narration. The most notable example being when Atticus explains Bob Ewell's rationale for his hostile...
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...In my opinion the theme of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee has a theme related to Atticus’ way of life. In order to judge someone you first have to understand their point of view. In Maycomb people like to judge others and they will judge based on many things. The first point is probably rumours. Boo Radley is a man who lives on the Finch’s street. Most of the he is considered crazy based on rumours. This makes him regularly judged and criticized by Dill, Jem and Scout in the early part of the novel. They made a game called “The Boo Radley Game” and in this game they act out the main rumour that is going around. The rumour was that Boo stabbed his parents with scissors. Another example of judgement based on rumours is when Boo is not treated like a human being. Scout, Dill and Jem show this by disrespecting his personal space. People need to stop starting and criticizing people based on rumours not only in this book, but in the world around us....
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...in her childhood, and uses the 17 pages of Scout’s first day at school to share her views on this. Harper Lee is critical of the education system, she shows us through Scout’s reading and writing ability that it does not allow you to excel as it does not take into account ability or need: ‘Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me’. Here, in effect Miss Caroline is telling Scout to forget everything she has learnt before school and learn to read and write again in the ‘correct manor’ of the ‘Dewey Decimal System’. At the beginning of the extract, Harper Lee emphasises Scout’s excitement on going to school, ‘I never looked forward more to anything in my life’. Harper Lee does this so that we empathize with Scout when she is disappointed with the way she is treated by Miss Caroline and turns upon a dramatic change: ‘If I didn’t have to stay, I’d leave’. The adult Scout looks back on episodes with her old teacher with satire, as she mocks her younger self’s naivety and Miss Caroline’s ridiculous teaching regime, where Scout is looked upon with ‘more than faint distaste’, just for outsmarting her classmates! Harper Lee indicates to the reader that Miss Caroline’s mistakes could be due to her foreign background, she is from ‘Winstone County’ and Scout suggests that the region is ‘full of liquor interests, Big mules, steel companies…and other persons of no background’. However, rather than sympathizing Miss Caroline,...
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...Empathy is more than just a characteristic of one's personality; it's a way of life. It's a way of viewing the world through other people’s eyes, and being able to truly understand their struggles and hardships. Although, one must go through a very complex and dramatic process in order to obtain this attitude. Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird describes this process. As Daniel Goleman once said, "if you're emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self– awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far." This quote adequately describes this trait. Empathy, although sometimes difficult...
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...SECOND DRAFT Contents Preamble Chapter 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Background Rationale Aims Interface with the Junior Secondary Curriculum Principles of Curriculum Design Chapter 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 1 Introduction Literature in English Curriculum Framework Strands and Learning Targets Learning Objectives Generic Skills Values and Attitudes Broad Learning Outcomes Chapter 3 5 7 9 10 11 11 13 Curriculum Planning 3.1 Planning a Balanced and Flexible Curriculum 3.2 Central Curriculum and School-based Curriculum Development 3.2.1 Integrating Classroom Learning and Independent Learning 3.2.2 Maximizing Learning Opportunities 3.2.3 Cross-curricular Planning 3.2.4 Building a Learning Community through Flexible Class Organization 3.3 Collaboration within the English Language Education KLA and Cross KLA Links 3.4 Time Allocation 3.5 Progression of Studies 3.6 Managing the Curriculum – Role of Curriculum Leaders Chapter 4 1 2 2 3 3 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 21 Learning and Teaching 4.1 Approaches to Learning and Teaching 4.1.1 Introductory Comments 4.1.2 Prose Fiction 4.1.3 Poetry i 21 21 23 32 SECOND DRAFT 4.1.4 Drama 4.1.5 Films 4.1.6 Literary Appreciation 4.1.7 Schools of Literary Criticism 4.2 Catering for Learner Diversity 4.3 Meaningful Homework 4.4 Role of Learners Chapter 5 41 45 52 69 71 72 73 74 Assessment 5.1 Guiding Principles 5.2 Internal Assessment 5.2.1 Formative Assessment 5.2.2 Summative Assessment 5.3 Public Assessment 5.3.1 Standards-referenced...
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