In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the process of losing one’s innocence is shown to the readers. When a black man named Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white woman, he must go to court. Because of a detriment he possesses, his skin color, it is Tom against the white skinned people of Maycomb. One white man, different from the rest, knows that Tom is innocent so he decided to defend Tom during his trial.…
Lawyer Atticus Finch, in his closing argument from the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee stated in the Tom Robinson case discusses racial prejudice. Finch’s purpose is to convince the jury, race has nothing to do with Tom Robinson’s innocence. He adopts a moralistic tone in order to persuade the jury Tom Robinson is innocent. Finch furthers his purpose by effectively employing rhetorical devices to inform the jury to put aside their differences and make the choice in which can set an innocent man free.…
To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel that presents extreme prejudice against blacks. The prejudice is shown on several occasions, especially in the Tom Robinson trial. Tom’s trial is similar to the Plessy vs. Ferguson case that took place in 1896. In both cases the defendant is ruled guilty because of their skin color.…
Tom Robinson, a character in To Kill A Mockingbird, is incessantly looked down upon due to his skin color, a factor that he has no control over. The story depicts Tom being accused of a crime that he didn’t commit. All due to the community assuming that it’s typical for a negro man to undertake a felony, he’s forced to suffer through unwanted and undeserved hardships. Tom haplessly had the disadvantage of being a colored man. “‘In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins.’”…
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is about a young girl, Scout, her brother, Jem, and their friend, Dill living in Maycomb County during the early 1930s. The three children hear stories about their neighbor, Arthur “Boo” Radley, and decide they want to try to get him out of his house. A few unsuccessful summers later, Scout’s father, Atticus, is a lawyer that has been assigned a colored man’s case. The man, Tom Robinson, was accused of raping a white woman. As the children know this isn’t true, they don’t understand why he was found guilty.…
“Simply because we were licked a hundred before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” (101) says Atticus Finch, the main character in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Atticus defends Tom Robinson, a black man, accused of attacking a white woman. Set in Jim Crow Alabama, Atticus is making a decision many people in Maycomb do not understand- taking a stand for a black man. Even though Atticus knows he does not have a chance at winning Tom’s case, because of his character, it makes sense for him to defend Tom Robinson because, Atticus does what is right, he lives by the “Golden Rule”, and he wants to set a good example to Jem and Scout.…
Racism is unfair and everyone should have equal rights in court, in personal choices, and in society. In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus supports an African American man, which is very rare in the society because most white people do not support black people, and they think that they are better than black people. Everybody in Maycomb thought that he was wrong and a disgrace to the family. White people never lose to black people. Even though Atticus knew that a black man would never win over a white, he gave it a shot and tried his best to support Tom Robinson.…
How doe's Harper lee comments on the life in the south during the 1930’s through her novel To kill a Mockingbird. Harper lee explains in the novel what life was like in the 1930’s. There wasn’t any slavery in the 1930’s. The town Macomb was segregated. That means black and whites didn’t and couldn’t do the same things.…
In the article Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird: Two Trials for the Classroom it stated that, “The lessons of the infamous 1930s Scottsboro Boys case in which two young white women wrongfully accused nine African American youths of rape illustrate through fact what Harper Lee tried to instruct through her fiction”. Black people were always accused from white people and the judge will always believe the white race, they were considered criminals, barbarians and savage. Also in the article “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Two Trials for the Classroom it stated that, “Both historical and fictional trials express the courage required to stand up for the Constitutional principle providing for equal justice to all under the law.” This quote shows that in the fictional story displayed the injustice that black people…
Since the early 1900s, there is racism in the deep south like the State of Alabama. Several African Americans doesn’t have the same right as a white man does. Sometimes, this leads to violence and misjustice. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee wants to tell the people that African Americans don’t have the same rights as a white man. Harper Lee tells a story where a black man is convicted and found guilty because his race is black.…
Judge Taylor argues that, “ People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” That being so when a person already has a preconceived opinion about something, their vision becomes impaired and their ears deafened. This suggests that they are so narrow-minded that they can only perceive what they are open to believing. Without widening the extent of their black and white minds and discovering the grey side of things. I will be exploring the aspects of, ‘voice’ and ‘place’ in relation to Tom Robinson.…
Maycomb County, the setting of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, has a deeply ingrained culture of racism over reason. Tom Robinson’s death was unjust, yet few mourned and the eventual death did not shock anyone. The reason for this tragedy is that Tom was too confident that people would show good morals when faced with a complicated decision. He made a series of poor choices that placed him in a difficult situation that even the best lawyer could not get him out of. Although Tom was framed, it was his own mistakes that enabled Bob Ewell to prosecute him in the first place.…
Tom Robinson, an African-American man, who was represented as a “Mockingbird” in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, was wrongly accused of raping a white woman. After he went on a trail filled with unfair juries and lost the case, he was sentenced to jail, but was then brutally murdered by some guards. Based on this storyline, the main theme is social injustice, the moral unfairness in a society of colored citizens and other minorities, which is mentioned the greatest and gradually developed throughout the book.…
Can you imagine trying to defend a black man in the South during the 1930’s when racism was still extremely prevalent? Well that is exactly what Atticus Finch did in To Kill A Mockingbird. Tom Robinson was a black man accused of rape. Atticus, being a lawyer, took on the role of defending him. It was known that Tom had a mangled left arm and had no purpose in doing the accused crime, but in the end racism won, over and the court 's decision was guilty purely based on skin color.…
Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, explores the role of heroes in unjust societies. The community of Maycomb, Alabama, the novel’s setting, is unjust, with inherent prejudice against many in the society. However, the character of Atticus Finch shows great heroism and fights the injustice that is prevalent throughout Maycomb, chiefly by electing to defend Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Atticus Finch deserves distinction as the greatest moral hero of all time. He demonstrates heroism by his willingness to oppose tradition and institutionalized racism.…