Examples Of Calpurnia Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird

Almost all of the characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. face some type of discrimination. After all it is the deep South in the 1930s. If you weren’t a white male that abided by the law and went to church you were going to be looked down upon. One of the main character in this novel that is often discriminated even if it’s not in an obvious way is Calpurnia. First she is black during the 1930s in the South. Next, she is as a female in the 1930s. And finally, a less obvious approach is the fact that she knows how to read and write which isn’t normal for blacks at this time. Calpurnia is actually one of the most discriminated characters in the whole novel. A main reason why Calpurnia is discriminated against is that she is black in the South during the 1930’s. First of all black were hated the most in the South at this time because it’s within a few …show more content…
This is a pretty impressive feat that she can read and write at a time where blacks and women were underprivileged and the book actually says that she taught herself how to. Calpurnia also taught Scout how to write, “Calpurnia was to blame for this. It kept me from driving her crazy on rainy days, I guess. She would set me a writing task by scrawling the alphabet firmly across the top of a tablet, then copying out a chapter of the Bible beneath,”(pg 19 pdf version). Calpurnia was one of the few people in her black church that also knew how to read and ended teaching her son Zeebo how to. “‘Maybe because they can’t read. Cal, did you teach Zeebo?’ ‘Yeah, Mister Jem. There wasn’t a school even when he was a boy. I made him learn, though,’”(pg 126 pdf version). What you can tell from this quote is that Calpurnia expected much more from Scout and Zeebo and might have realized that the society they lived in would never give them and chance to learn or use the skills of reading or