The American Dream, the archetypal notion that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative, is an ideal that most people strive to achieve. Unfortunately, in the past and in modern day, the population that surrounds us has been propelled by conceptions such as racism and gender roles which avert us from obtaining our visions. Classic works of literature including To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and A Raisin in the Sun accurately display a lack of equality and fair treatment in the sharing of wealth and opportunities by incorporating racism and gender roles into the lives if the characters in the novels. The authors of To Kill a Mockingbird, …show more content…
To Kill a Mockingbird allows modern readers to explore their emotions and perspectives on the issue at hand in this particular novel.. The city of Maycomb is one from a typical southern gothic piece of literature. This means that there is a man who knows what is right and what is wrong, in this novel that man is Atticus Finch. Atticus Finch is a lawyer who is assigned to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is accused of raping a white woman. By the end of the novel the reader learns that Tom Robinson was proven guilty by the jury regardless of the facts provided that easily prove he is innocent. This unfair decision was made as a result of racism. The inescapable ideal that white folk were more respectable that black men is what ultimately led to the death of an innocent man. In addition to the unforgivable racism that proceeds to exist in the town of Maycomb, there is also a lot of evidence showing that men were preferred over women. From the innocent eyes of a child named Scout Finch, we are able to see this preference. Scout lived her life trying to prove to everyone that she could be as masculine as her brother and Dill, even though both genders come with the same amount of rules and …show more content…
This novel portrays the american dream as the ability to peacefully move into a nice home with your family and have good jobs and not face the dangers of being a black family living in a white neighborhood. From a black family’s perspective, this novel highlights the racism and hierarchies in a family which dominated the presence of most black families at the time this novel was written. Because of their skin tone, the Cunninghams are not openly accepted in the neighborhood they recently bought a house in. The reader learns this fact when a man visits the Cunninghams’ house to earn them of the fact that the white people in his neighborhood will go to extremes to get their family out of their “perfect” neighborhood. The man reasons by saying that the Cunninghams’ presence would disturb the natural order in the community and destroy all that the white folks had worked for. Nonetheless, the Cunninghams’ still move into their new home once Walter finds the leader and the man in himself. Through his newfound manliness, Walter is now capable of harnessing power to be the leader of the family and to replace his mother in that role. In terms of