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 environment affects us. Right at the start of the book, BQ #6 comes up, with the Radley Family. at a young age, Arthur Radley (a.k.a. Boo Radley) was in a gang, and was arrested. He gets released and put under near house arrest by his father. His surroundings
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He's been grown up on the fact that all n*****s are inferior, and Atticus is tarnishing the family name by taking Tom Robinson's case. Francis even goes as far to tell Scout that, "Grandma says it's bad enough he [Atticus] lets you all [Jem and Scout] run wild, but now he's turned out a n*****r lover we'll never be able to walk the streets of Macomb ever agin (sic). He's ruinin' the family, that's what he's doin." (Lee, 110) For Francis to talk about Atticus like that in front of his own daughter, takes some serious cojones. It shows how Francis growing up with Grandma has put a belief in him that n*****rs are below white people, just from living and probably hearing this a lot from …show more content…
Bob Ewell is the worst of them all. He smokes, drinks, beats, rapes, and overall abuses his children, Mayella included. He lives nearest to the black neighborhood in Macomb, near the town dump, which is probably why he hates black people, that they have a better home than he does, seeing that he lives very near the dump, and they live a bit farther away from it. (His yard had been once described by Scout as an extension of the dump. A used dentist’s chair was on the Ewell’s front yard) His hate of black people is so extensive, that he falsely blamed a black man for abusing and raping Mayella. He did what he did (BQ #3) because he was a white man, and he blamed a black man for it because it would be more believable if Tom had raped and abused Mayella other that Bob doing it. Later, Atticus reflects on this and says that, “...whenever a white man does that [cheats a black man] to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that man is trash.” (Lee,
He's been grown up on the fact that all n*****s are inferior, and Atticus is tarnishing the family name by taking Tom Robinson's case. Francis even goes as far to tell Scout that, "Grandma says it's bad enough he [Atticus] lets you all [Jem and Scout] run wild, but now he's turned out a n*****r lover we'll never be able to walk the streets of Macomb ever agin (sic). He's ruinin' the family, that's what he's doin." (Lee, 110) For Francis to talk about Atticus like that in front of his own daughter, takes some serious cojones. It shows how Francis growing up with Grandma has put a belief in him that n*****rs are below white people, just from living and probably hearing this a lot from …show more content…
Bob Ewell is the worst of them all. He smokes, drinks, beats, rapes, and overall abuses his children, Mayella included. He lives nearest to the black neighborhood in Macomb, near the town dump, which is probably why he hates black people, that they have a better home than he does, seeing that he lives very near the dump, and they live a bit farther away from it. (His yard had been once described by Scout as an extension of the dump. A used dentist’s chair was on the Ewell’s front yard) His hate of black people is so extensive, that he falsely blamed a black man for abusing and raping Mayella. He did what he did (BQ #3) because he was a white man, and he blamed a black man for it because it would be more believable if Tom had raped and abused Mayella other that Bob doing it. Later, Atticus reflects on this and says that, “...whenever a white man does that [cheats a black man] to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that man is trash.” (Lee,