To Kill a Mockingbird and the southern gothic genre
In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, the author Harper Lee utilizes the genre of southern gothic. The southern gothic genre is the best choice for the story that author Harper Lee wanted to tell. The reason why is because this genre allows the story to have an eerie mood fitting with the narrator, Scout who is a child and sees certain places or people as uncomfortably creepy or as jarring. It also allows the issue of unjust racism in the most inappropriate places, in this novel, it is a court of law which should be the most just and fair place, but is not. This story takes place in the early 1930’s and follows Scout Finch when her father, Atticus begins to defend a black man accused of rape. This man's name is Tom Robinson and this case shows Scout and her brother Jem how atrocious the racist ways of thinking happen and how they affect people in their lives. Southern gothic is a genre of writing found only in American Literature. It …show more content…
Characters in this book shown to have monster qualities are characters such as the mad dog Tim Johnson, or most prominently, Boo Radley. In the case of the mad dog Tim Johnson he is a monster type character because of how he moves and his sickness. Stalking towards the children while he is spasming and wobbling drunkenly. They describe him as follows, “We could see him shiver like a horse shedding flies; his jaw opened and shut; he was alist, but he was being gradually pulled towards us”. (Lee, 126). That is a very monster type of movement that might even appear in a horror movie. In the case of Boo Radley the children see him as a ghost and not human. Believing he eats squirrels and even saying “Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.”. (Lee, 10). They don’t see him as human and this added to what other characters believe about him, make him the monster in the gothic part of the