...To Kill A Mockingbird & Race Relations “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (King). This quote by the notable Martin Luther King Jr. describes an image of society that has yet to develop. Ever since the European settlement of Colonial America, an air of Caucasian superiority has existed. African Americans spent centuries working on plantations while the Caucasians went about their privileged lives; they are still viewed as uneducated and a threat to the safety of Caucasians. Hispanics are viewed as people who work the jobs that the Caucasians refuse to do. Native Americans have become targets of sexual...
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...long history of discrimination in the United States. Harper Lee’s book, To Kill A Mockingbird, speaks of a small town called Maycomb, where young Scout Finch lives. Scout’s father, Atticus, bears a striking resemblance to Harper Lee’s father. This is just one of the many parallels between Monroeville, where Lee grew...
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...“To kill a mockingbird” by Harper Lee is based on the central idea that is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Atticus tells Scout this when he gives them guns. After, Atticus tells her it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. She goes to ask Miss Maudie why it’s a sin. Miss Maudie explains it’s a sin because they don’t do anything but sing their hearts out focus. This refers to the thesis statement because it deals with Miss Maudie, Atticus Finch, and Tom Robinson. Miss Maudie is true friend and she has good moral as Atticus. Miss Maudie implies “Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to say something she settled her fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. Then she did and waited. ‘I simply wanted to tell you that there are some men in...
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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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...Student Name: Lecturer’s Name: Date: Southern Contemporary Fiction and the Issue of Race Thesis: Southern contemporary fiction contained a lot of truths about the race relations between Black and White Americans in the twentieth century. Introduction Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there has been a significant shift in the focus of southern literature, both fiction and nonfiction. In the nineteenth century, most Southern fiction works were mainly on the Civil War and the Reconstruction. However, as that generation died away, the new crop of authors who had never experienced the civil war or the Reconstruction became more objective in their writings about the South. Contemporary Southern writers such as Harper Lee, Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner wrote fiction, but the stories written had a lot of truth about the way communities in the American South lived like in the twentieth century. As a result, one cannot fail but notice that there is one recurring issue in almost every novel in contemporary Southern fiction; the issue of race. (Sundquist 1994) Authors usually write stories which are a reflection of the attitudes and the norms of their time and contemporary Southern fiction reflects this. The southern part of the United States has always had a large percentage of people of African descent living there. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two states actually had an African-American majority; South Carolina and Mississippi...
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...K Mrs. G ENG2D1 6 January 2015 To Kill a Mockingbird: A Excellent Adaptation To Kill a Mockingbird, according to many people is one of the finest books written in modern American Literature, which spreads the honorable message of racial injustice in the 1930’s in an informative and creative way. By showing a family known as “the Finches” experience and face the trials of living in a small Alabaman Town called Maycomb. The book itself was written by Harper Lee, a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. When the novel was turned to a movie, there were many challenges that the director had to face while turning this classic novel into life. The director Robert Mulligan had to make sure the movie itself is an excellent adaptation of the book within the restrictions of creating a movie such as time limit, audience restrictions, money, and making sure to not replicate the entire book. This is why a book is better in an aspect as there are not as many restrictions to when creating a book compared to a movie. The film and the novel itself has many similarities and differences, however it is upon whether or not the film is a successful adaptation and portrays the theme of racial injustice. This film is a reasonable adaptation as it demonstrates the message of the film using the same context as the book and brings the characters to life in a creative way. There is great screenplay and dialogue amongst the characters which allows the audience to understand the movie thoroughly. However...
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...protagonists in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, must endure this evolution with the help of their father. Atticus, an honest and righteous...
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...Harper Lee based her novel off of her childhood and her father was a lawyer just like Atticus. As well, Harper Lee never expected To Kill A Mockingbird to become such a success (Lazendorfer). (http://mentalfloss.com/article/62868/11-facts-about-kill-mockingbird). The author of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper lee, used historical events to establish her novel. Jim Crow, mob mentality, and the issues of racism have relations to the time period. To begin, one similarity between Harper Lee’s novel and history is the Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow was a brutal streak of laws that were contrary to colored people. Many white people believed they were needed as a social control mechanism, to protect white women, and to keep Blacks in structure. A few laws...
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...Imagine being back in the Great Depression and being accused of something that did not happen and being found guilty. This is what happened to Tom Robinson in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, Harper Lee used real life stories as a guide to help her write her novel correctly and accurately. The novel is tied to a few stories such as, Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the issues of racism in that time period. One of the first connections to America’s history of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. To begin, Jim Crow was a racist system that promoted inequality between the races. A bountiful number of people believed the laws were necessary to keep black people in their place. In addition, they used the Jim Crow...
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...The Man in the Moon (1991) Review/Film; A New Boy In Town Captures Her Heart Everything about "The Man in the Moon," Robert Mulligan's effortlessly old-fashioned family drama set in a small Southern town, has a rosy glow. It's a reminder that Mr. Mulligan, a seasoned film maker whose credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Summer of '42" and "The Other," can direct with real tenderness and without fake emotion. His latest film unfolds gently and gracefully, in a climate where the warmth isn't merely a matter of weather. Until its final reel, when it strains badly to accommodate an almost biblical stroke of retribution, "The Man in the Moon" is a small, fond film that achieves a kind of quiet perfection. The story concerns two sisters, and Mr. Mulligan can find something evocative even in the way the elder braids the younger one's hair. The latter, 14-year-old Dani (Reese Witherspoon), is just on the verge of real beauty, while the slightly older Maureen (Emily Warfield) has already gotten there. The girls' family, which is beautifully evoked, exists at all different stages of development, from their toddler sister to their pregnant mother (Tess Harper) and the father (Sam Waterston) who is wary of his daughters' prospective suitors. In his or her own way, each member of this family longs for a boy. When one arrives, in the form of a handsome teen-age neighbor named Court (Jason London), he affects the girls' family in powerful ways. The coltish Dani becomes smitten with...
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...The consequences of Mayella’s relations with Tom were disastrous and, out of fear, she immediately sold Tom out—because a black man is always worth less than a white man in the eyes of the populace (in 1935). That is 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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...Analysis of “To kill a mockingbird” Saryuna Rinchino, gr. 02193 The story under analysis is an extract from a novel “To kill a mockingbird”. The book was written by Harper Lee in 1960. Harper Lee was born in 1926 in the state of Alabama. In 1945-1949 she studied law at the University of Alabama. “To kill a mockingbird” is her first novel and after being published it was highly acclaimed and even was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, one of the most important awards in literature. The book became an international bestseller and was adapted into screen in 1962. The events of the novel “To kill a mockingbird” take place during a difficult time in the South. At that time black people were treated as people of lower level than white ones. Racial Discrimination was running high in the South as a whole, especially in Alabama. Many details of “To kill a mockingbird”are apparently autobiographical but Harper Lee insisted that the novel is fully a work of fiction. The events of the extract take place in the court of Maycomb County. Two small children secretly came to the trial and was sitting there the whole trial. A Negro, Tom Robison by name, was falsely accused in rapping a white woman. But Atticus, a defender and the two children’s father, was absolutely sure in his innocence and tried to give all necessary facts to persuade the jury. Actually it was the white woman’s father, Bob Ewell, who had bitten her as he had seen her kissing Tom Robinson. And also it was Mayella Ewell who...
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...To Kill a Mockingbird “Mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’ gardens, don’t nest in the corncribs, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out to us,” Atticus said to Scout (148). Indeed, Atticus’s word was extremely true in the situation of Tom Robinson, one of the characters in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which was written by Harper Lee. This story took place in 1930’s in Southern Alabama when the injustice between black people and white people was very deep. In this period, the black people were considered as the Mockingbirds, the innocuous birds for people’s lives. However, these birds often were killed without any guilt just like the black people were shot and lynched by the white people even though they were innocent. It was the fate for the black people in the South who lived in the 1930’s. Especially, through the court scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird” which was about the trial of Tom Robinson, a married black man, who was sentenced for raping Mayella, a white woman, Harper Lee emphasized deeply the injustice for the black people. Indeed, the black people did not have any justice in the South in 1930’s. Tom Robinson was the defendant who was accused of raping Mayella on the night of August 21st. The truth was that Tom did not do anything bad to Mayella. On that day, he only passed by Mayella’s house and came in to her house to help her as she requested. Suddenly, she hugged him around the waist and kissed...
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...How symbolism can help you better understand To Kill a Mockingbird In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee uses symbolism to reveal an overall theme of human dignity. Maycomb County is a typical sleepy southern town that is blinded by the disease of racism. An innocent black man becomes a victim of the disease when he is accused of rapeing a white woman. Firstly the symbols Jem’s pants and the rolly-polly show the important theme of maturation. Furthermore the symbols Tim Johnson and the snowman highlight a theme of destroying racism. Lastly one-shot Finch and the perfect white waxy camellia symbolize true courage. Harper Lee uses Jem’s pants and the rolly-polly as symbols to convey a theme of maturation. Jem and Scout where in the Radley’s backyard trying to get a look at Boo Radley when Jem see’s a shadow the children immediately flee form the house. As the children were running through the collards as they hear the roar of a shotgun. As Jem and Scout are fleeing the scene Jem’s pants gets caught in the fence and he has to leave it in their backyard if he wants to survive. Later that night he says how he needs to go back and retrieve his pants not for him but for Atticus, “‘Atticus ain’t never whipped me ever since I can remember, and I wanta keep it that way.’” (Lee 75). He goes back to get his pants to keep his relation shit with Atticus. There is a evident theme maturation in Jem at this point, from when he thought turtles could not feel, too now when he is showing...
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...his murder. Tom's murder echoes Aimé Césaire sarcastic statement in his Et les chiens se taisent, that "in the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered" (qtd in Black Skin, White Masks 61). Darren Felty in "An Overview of To Kill a Mockingbird", states: "Lee wants to make explicit the consequences of racism. She accomplishes this goal by employing Tom Robinson's trial to allude to different historical events such as the famous 'Scottsboro Boys' trials of the 1930s". According to Felty, in these trials nine black men were accused of raping two white women. Despite a lack of evidence, the men were sentenced to death by the white jury. Unlike Tom, they finally escaped death after a long time (2). Tom Robinson's trial mirrors these historical events to illustrate the racial binarity and segregation that the black people suffered throughout the colonial history. Racial binarity is prevalent in the novel. The narrow-minded people of Maycomb are in favor of segregation in their society and they consider sexual relationship as a threat to their segregation. According to Adam Smykowski in "Symbolism and Racism in To Kill a Mockingbird", For example, "the red geraniums that Mayella Ewell kept in her yard" stand for "Southern white womanhood". Also "the fence that surrounds the Ewells' property", suggests "the fear and racism of the Southern whites that tries to protect this womanhood" (54). Although it is Mayella Ewell...
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