To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Introduction

The evening of August 24th, 1955 in Money, Mississippi a black boy was villainized for an action similar to what a white boy would do. Emmett Till, born July 25th 1941, traveled to Mississippi from Chicago to spend two weeks with his family. That night he was hanging out with a few of his cousins outside of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market. A few of the boys and Emmett went inside of the store and the boys made a purchase Emmett was left inside of the store alone with the cashier, Carolyn Bryant.…

The 1930s and 1940s were know for the campaign against desegregation of the game of baseball. The black baseball players were ultimately deprived from playing in the big leagues with the white ballplayers during the time of segregation. Not only were colored players prohibited from playing on white teams, but their games were often cancelled simply because the white major league teams “refus[ed] to play against a colored ball club” (Lamb 67). Often times, there were many black players who were…

As part of our curriculum in Higher Education, a required course was Social Justice 6404. In this class the objective was to learn about different forms of social diversity to help prepare students for educating them on the issues of racism, discrimination, and injustice. One of the resource materials were films dealing with different class systems as teaching models. The first film viewed was “Sneetches” which gave me a better understanding about stereotypes and how they impact individuals…

The short story The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Cornell is about survival and reveals that when a human’s life is at risk, they are able to think logically because one wrong decision could be fatal. When Rainsford first met General Zaroff, he claimed he was not a murderer. For example, he states, “Thank you, I’m a hunter not a murderer” (Cornell 14). This quote conveys that Rainsford had a certain mindset about killing others. But his opinion clearly changed by the end of the story. This is…

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an excellent book that portrays the Big Questions in many ways. As a 6 year old living in the Great Depression, Jean-Louise (Scout) Finch, and Jeremy (Jem) Finch, take the reader to the roots of the behavior of humans: innocence and guilt, kindness and cruelty, love and hate, calmness to ferocity. Throughout the book, the Big Questions show up, and there are many examples of how this is so. From conformity to fate, and the purpose of life to how our…

In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jem Finch is a protective and influential part of Scout’s life. Scout usually looks up to Atticus for advice; however, Jem idolizes Atticus and wants to be just like him. This causes Jem to become a patriarch and protective figure over Scout. While Scout may not want to be domineered by Jem, that changes when Scout finds a stick of gum in the Radley’s tree: “‘Don’t eat things you find, Scout. Spit it out right now! Don’t you know you're not supposed to…

Growing up as a black female, has greatly influenced my ideology of social justice. Growing up the first lesson that the elders in my family taught all us children was, “ In this society you already have one strike against you”. Being a black woman the was said to be a second strike against me. I never really understood their teachings until, I was much older. As children I don’t think we realize how ugly the world truly is. In my youth there was such innocence, I didn’t understand the stares,…

When someone makes a mistake they will learn. It's they way they are treated that will change them. Forgiveness is the act of letting someone get away with the hope that they will learn from it and not do it again. In mitch Albom’s the five people you meet in heaven, it sets in a world where a man named Eddie is learning about his life from heaven. He learns from 1 out of 5 people that forgiveness is the best way. I think that everyone should forgive and not punish.I can relate this story to…

In the book to kill a mocking bird there were a lot of trials and tribulations. Scout, Jem, Atticus, Calpurnia went through a lot, through this book all the racism, discrimination, shunning, and through it all they manage to get through it. Scout introduces us to Maycomb, “a tired old town” where people shuffle around with nothing to do, and to Calpurnia, her family’s servant, an African American woman with a hand as “wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.” Calpurnia is the…

Racism and Sexism are both threatening to the children in the the bluest eye. Or in other words to the development of Pecola, Frieda, and Claudia because of society’s standards of sexism and society’s influence of racism had distilled an unrealistic feeling of quantity upon them. However, racism is more harmful to the girl’s self esteem because they start to believe in the lies that society instill on them. That whiteness is beauty and blackness is ugly. This lack of quantity caused Pecola to…