Many authors draw on past events and people in their lives to serve as inspiration for future works, with Harper Lee, winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and many other accolades for her debut novel To Kill a Mockingbird, being no different. Harper Lee’s childhood and personal background had a great effect on her writing in that what she had experienced and witnessed over her lifetime inspired many of the most distinct aspects of To Kill a Mockingbird, such as the setting, one of the major characters in the novel, as well as one of the major events that takes place in the story.
Firstly, Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama, which provided the inspiration for the setting of the story, the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. …show more content…
The fictional trial of Tom Robinson in Mockingbird and the trial of the “Scottsboro Boys” feature many similarities with each other, in that the Scottsboro case involved “nine black youths [who were] tried for allegedly raping two white woman,” whereas Tom Robinson is tried for “raping Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a poor white man,” with the former later serving as the inspiration for the latter, in which both trials resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for the defendants as given out by “all-white juries,” although the evidence implied exactly the contrary (Flynt, Salter). Also, both trials were heavily influenced by the nature and scale of the Great Depression for that particular time period in which the trials take place. For example, the two women in the Scottsboro case were hoboing on a train “returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga” and to avoid “vagrancy and morality charges” for participating in a fight that occurred on the train, they “falsely accused the nine black men [of rape]” (Linder, Salter). This parallels the situation in which Tom Robinson found himself in, in a period of “economic depression when many blacks and whites shared a common poverty,” wherein the white population of Maycomb did not have much sympathy for the plight of Tom Robinson as they were dealing with a lot of problems themselves (Flynt). All in all, the “Scottsboro Boys” trial help to form the basis for the trial of Tom Robinson, one which the cruel injustice of the era, and of the justice system, is heavily
Firstly, Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama, which provided the inspiration for the setting of the story, the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. …show more content…
The fictional trial of Tom Robinson in Mockingbird and the trial of the “Scottsboro Boys” feature many similarities with each other, in that the Scottsboro case involved “nine black youths [who were] tried for allegedly raping two white woman,” whereas Tom Robinson is tried for “raping Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a poor white man,” with the former later serving as the inspiration for the latter, in which both trials resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for the defendants as given out by “all-white juries,” although the evidence implied exactly the contrary (Flynt, Salter). Also, both trials were heavily influenced by the nature and scale of the Great Depression for that particular time period in which the trials take place. For example, the two women in the Scottsboro case were hoboing on a train “returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga” and to avoid “vagrancy and morality charges” for participating in a fight that occurred on the train, they “falsely accused the nine black men [of rape]” (Linder, Salter). This parallels the situation in which Tom Robinson found himself in, in a period of “economic depression when many blacks and whites shared a common poverty,” wherein the white population of Maycomb did not have much sympathy for the plight of Tom Robinson as they were dealing with a lot of problems themselves (Flynt). All in all, the “Scottsboro Boys” trial help to form the basis for the trial of Tom Robinson, one which the cruel injustice of the era, and of the justice system, is heavily