...In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee she used real life events for inspiration to create her book. Such as The Great Depression, which was a long and severe time in history with death and havoc (Mccabe page #). Many people went through so much havoc losing their jobs or not being able to go to school (McCabe 14). There are three influences in To Kill a Mockingbird the Jim Crow laws, Mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials. The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow Laws were an outrageous and wrong gesture (Pilgrim). *must site Pilgrim every time when facts are said about the laws (Pilgrim)* The laws were… The White’s thought they needed the laws because… The Jim Crow Laws can be seen...
Words: 540 - Pages: 3
...Historical Paper “The era can be summed up in two words: breadlines and debt (McCabe 12).” This quote is a great description of the time period the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee took place. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a book about a young girl growing up in a small town in Alabama. Throughout the book, there are many historical references including the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials. One of the very first historical references in To Kill A Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that were made to separate Blacks and Whites (Pilgrim). They separated colored people from white people and made a mindset among people that white people were better than Blacks (Pilgrim)....
Words: 923 - Pages: 4
...The Great Depression was a period in the 1930’s where poverty had reached an all time high after the stock market crash in 1929 (McCabe). The novel To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during this time, and faces many challenges related to The Great Depression. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, used inspiration from these real-life historical events to hook into her novel. Some of these significant historical events include the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials in conjunction with racism. One of the first known influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were a collection of unrelenting anti-black laws (Pilgrim). These laws weren’t just simply a set list of rules,...
Words: 988 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 4484 - Pages: 18
...life as a young child. The protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, is the daughter of a lawyer, a single father who raises both her and her brother, Jem. Nelle Harper Lee was also the daughter of a lawyer, Amasa Coleman Lee, who raised her, two sisters, and a brother, while their mother was suffering from a bipolar disorder. By just describing their immediate family situations, there is already a few similarities between both families. Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is not an autobiography, but there is no doubt there is a strong sense of relativity between Harper Lee and the young Scout Finch. One of the similarities between Scout and Lee is their early exposure to racism as young children. Lee has a very strong experience with racism or segregation, due to the fact of her father being a lawyer who represented all kinds of black clients, and the developing chaos of discrimination, riots, and racism. On March 25, 1931, nine young men were accused and arrested for rape of two white women, which means that Lee would have been around at that time. Both women denied having been raped by any of the men. After a period of five trials, five of the men were sentenced to long prison sentences and many lawyers thought the sentences were motivated by racial prejudice. Harper Lee addresses this in her novel by saying, “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for (To Kill a Mockingbird.) Another time when Harper was exposed to...
Words: 1062 - Pages: 5
...To kill a Mockingbird is said to be about Harper Lee’s life; however, she never did interviews so there is some evidence, but not enough to say for certain. With Harper Lee’s death in 2016 no one will ever know for sure. To Kill a Mockingbird is about Scout and her family going through Tom Robinson's trial and the family living through the Great Depression. Scout is six at the beginning of the story, but we watch her grow up through the book. Scout's older brother Jem is ten in the beginning of the book we watch him grow up in the book as well. To Kill a Mockingbird was published on July 11th 1960 by Warner books the book takes place in the 1930’s great depression times. The book was written to show you the life of scout as a kid. The meaning...
Words: 1097 - Pages: 5
...“Prejudice is the child of ignorance” (William Hazlitt). Throughout the book To Kill a Mockingbird people judge others before they truly have a right to judge. In the town of Maycomb, Alabama many individuals make judgements about Boo Radley and Tom Robinson before they know the truth. Scout Finch is a rare breed in this time, with her father defending Tom Robinson and her brother Jem and her interested in finding more about Boo Radley she constantly gets a chance to make unprejudiced judgements on people. Harper Lee helps the reader better understand prejudice using symbolism , imagery, and metaphors throughout the story. Prejudice was common throughout the story To Kill a Mockingbird, this could be seen through symbolism. It is a sin to kill a mockingbird, this is explained when Miss Maudie says “they don’t do one thing...
Words: 569 - Pages: 3
...popular culture is today, is very different from who it may have been portrayed many years ago. This paper will not only talk about popular culture in general, but it will analyze a certain piece of work that signifies popular culture. The popular fiction novel that I choose to critique is a very well known book called To Kill a Mockingbird, published by author Harper Lee in 1960. This novel takes place in a small segregated fictional town in the south, called Maycomb, Alabama. Harper based this novel on her life experience growing up in the south as a young child and what it was like to be separated between the whites and the blacks. To Kill a Mockingbird, is about five characters, with Scout, a six year old little girl, and her brother Jem a ten year old boy, their father Atticus, who was a defense attorney for the local courts, and their neighbor Boo Radley. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the era of the Great Depression, and where segregation was a big thing. The book displays what it was like in the 1960’s to defend a African American person and stand up for their rights, whether you were right or wrong. The plot of this fiction novel takes place in the small town of Maycomb, Atticus is found on trial for defending a black man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of raping a local white woman. The accused is the towns local drunk by the name of Bob Ewell. Atticus family has been tormented and criticized and called names for standing up for Tom Robinson....
Words: 708 - Pages: 3
...The Great Depression, a time of hopelessness and uncertainty is the setting of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (McCabe 12). The Depression was a time of devastation and debt for many companies and families all across the United States (McCabe 12). Lee used multiple historical events as her inspiration to write To Kill a Mockingbird. Those events are represented by mob mentality, Jim Crow Laws, and the Scottsboro trials. One of the influences in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were laws created to make white people have more power than black people. One of these laws included that black and white people were to eat separately. If they ever did eat together, white people were served first (Pilgrim)....
Words: 890 - Pages: 4
...To Kill A Mockingbird If there was a book that easily tackles topics and a must-read for young readers then To Kill A Mockingbird would fit it. Harper Lee created To Kill A Mockingbird in the 1960s, The book is set in the 1930s in the Great Depression through the eyes of a child. The book has a lot of themes throughout the story using literary elements but how the author uses these literary elements like juxtaposition, motifs, and imagery to prove themes like humbleness, innocent of people and how unjust the society is will be explained. Harper Lee is great using literary elements to make themes like using juxtaposition to build a theme of humbleness. In chapter 12, after Calpurnia brings them to her church she says how “folks don’t like to have somebody around known more than they do, It aggravates’em” (Lee 167). Even after the fact she one of four people in her church who are literate Calpurnia knows being modest is better than bragging about it. Someone who isn’t would be Aunt Alexandra. In chapter 13, it talks about Aunt Alexandra and how “she never let a chance escape...
Words: 730 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 570 - Pages: 3
...Harper Lee used many historical events to influence her book To Kill a Mockingbird. The Great Depression took place throughout the whole book(McCabe 12). The two words that came to play in The Great Depression were bread lines and debt(McCabe 12). Many people had to start getting free meals(McCabe 13). Many students could not even go to college(McCabe 14). In addition to the Great depression more influences were the Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro trials. The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws was a racial caste system(Pilgrim). These laws were only used for the colored people between 1877 and 1960’s. One law was that a black man was not allowed to offer...
Words: 706 - Pages: 3
...trimester. This quote all together to me is basically saying that everyone should look at everything in their own perspective or even be their own person. One of the novels that we have read through this trimester was “To Kill a Mockingbird”. With Hogan’s quote and this story, they can relate to something in the end. Hogan’s quote ties into the story “To Kill a Mockingbird” by basically recapturing what it is told throughout the quote. In the story “To Kill a Mockingbird”, one of the main characters...
Words: 714 - Pages: 3
...The novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro trials both took place during the 1930’s. There was a lot of segregation. Segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart. Blacks were treated much worse than whites. Punishments to black people were much worse than for white people. The court case in To Kill a Mockingbird and in the Scottsboro Case, both took place in Alabama. In segregation was involved in Alabama. In To Kill a Mockingbird, there was a black man named Tom. Tom was a very reliable worker/ man whose arm got caught in a cotton gin when he was younger. All of the muscles were torn and his whole left arm was 10 inches smaller than his right. He was accused...
Words: 447 - Pages: 2
...“To Kill A Mockingbird” “ There is no greater heresy than to do the right thing for the wrong reason or moreover the wrong thing for the right reason” this quote by Victor Hugo runs parallel to Harper Lee’s gripping tale of right and wrong, good and evil. “To Kill A Mockingbird” is a intricate and symbolic masterpiece of the intertwining elements of positive and negative, and how when they occupy the same space no becomes hardly recognizable from the other In this story, a well to do family is faced with very compromising scenarios that causes them and the reader alike to question certain core principles that are supposedly innate, and guides them through a journey of racism, pride, deceit, judgment, and finally reconciling all of these. All characters in the novel perpetually orbit around sentiments of morals and social acceptance and to deal with these themes in a realistic manner. The very title of the story “To Kill A Mockingbird” speaks the nuance of wrong invading or violating what is right. Atticus Finch, the patriarch of the family, has the most explicit encounter with moral injustice and the ordeal of fighting against it. As a lawyer in a small, southern town, Finch is endowed, voluntarily no doubt, with the dubious responsibility of representing an African American man in a criminal case of rape. The small town of Maycomb, Alabama is very racist and Atticus’s decision does not go over well with most of the citizens there. In order to appease the majority Finch...
Words: 953 - Pages: 4