Examples Of Rights In To Kill A Mockingbird

Imagine what our nation would be like if we were denied our basic rights. In the Declaration of Independence it states that all men are allowed certain unalienable rights. The main rights are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, these rights are violated many times in literature and real life. A good example of these rights being trampled in literature is in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In this book Scout and Jem , a little girl and boy, watch the trouble of racism play out in their small town. In real life this can be seen in Viva la Causa, a hispanic strike against labor conditions, The Children's March, a children's reaction during the Civil Rights movement, and the Scottsboro Boys, a group of black …show more content…
These are all great examples of when the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were trampled upon.
The first and probably most important right in The Declaration of Independence is the right to life. An excellent example of the right to life being attacked is found in To Kill a Mockingbird. In this novel Tom, a black man falsely accused of rape, has been convicted by a jury and is in jail until he can get into the supreme court. Before Tom can make it to court the jailer said that he was “escaping,” and shot him seventeen times. Later, Atticus, Tom's lawyer and Scout and Jem's father, tells Scout that, “ they didn’t have to shoot him that much.”