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.…
Maycomb County, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, willingly took a white man’s word, an ignoble white man’s word, over that of an obviously innocent black man. “We can educate ‘em till we’re blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of ‘em, but there’s no lady safe in her bed these nights,” (266) Mrs. Farrow declares, promulgating the idea that a certain people group must be stereotyped and encouraging the belief that all “darkys” were crass and savage. But, Tom Robinson had done nothing. Tom, no matter the color of his skin, maintained gentlemanly comportment.…
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.’”…
Black lives matter, in these two films To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men we learn that we need to stand up for what we believe in and take action. Atticus is in To Kill a Mockingbird and Juror eight is in 12 angry men and they have the same personalities in their films. The comparison here is Atticus from To Kill a Mockingbird and Juror 8 from 12 Angry Men. Juror eight was very determined and compassionate about the case. Juror 8 acted as if he knew he was correct but did not have much evidence to back himself up, he stood up for himself based on reasonable doubt.…
The Trials of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and “The Scottsboro Boys” Racism was prevalent during the 1930s. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a Black man named Tom Robinson illustrates the pressures of racism. Harper Lee depicts what happens when he allegedly rapes a white woman. This case is similar to that of the historical trial of “Scottsboro Boys” in which nine Black males allegedly raped two white women and were sentenced for it.…
Harper Lee, in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), argues via the closing statement of Atticus Finch against the mistreatment of black people. In his closing argument, Atticus argues that the defendant, Tom Robinson, is innocent, and should not be so quickly accused or condemned simply because of the color of his skin. Lee supports her argument by illustrating that the townspeople's beliefs about black people are obviously false. The author's purpose is to show the immorality of the oppression of black people. The author writes in a formal tone, using Atticus's diction to make an emotional appeal to Maycomb county, and America by extension, that black people are no more criminal than white; that the prejudice against them besmirches the…
Throughout life people are categorized, misread, labeled, and seen as something they are not. This can often have severe impacts on the person's life and the way they interact with the world around them. In Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Arthur “Boo” Radley and Tom Robinson are judged as well as mistreated due to the way society views them. Rumors have been spread about both of these men making their lives much worse. Since Tom Robinson is an African American, he is put into the lowest class possible and if something were to happen between a white and an African American, without doubt the African Americans are put into mind as the bad ones.…
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.…
The texts ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, written by Harper Lee and ‘12 Angry Men’ directed by Sidney Lumet; both display contrasting features and qualities. While both are very diverse texts, they both share an undeniable resemblance, in relation to a single person affecting a group 's idea of a just and morally right decision. Prejudice and discrimination are a reflection of how both the accused characters in either text sway opinions about which course of action is correct. Two of the protagonists, Atticus Finch and Juror 8, exemplify how a single individual can drastically change what those around them perceive to be right and wrong. Children in both texts, specifically Jem and scout, and Juror 3’s son, are also an example of how one person…
Around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, racism was prominent. Many blacks were faced with discrimination and inequality. Racism is shown brilliantly in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the famous trials of the “Scottsboro Boys”. In the Scottsboro trials, nine black boys were accused and found guilty of raping two white women. Similarities are proven to be seen in both trials between the attitudes and backgrounds of the characters.…
To Kill a Mockingbird shows racism through Tom Robinson’s case…
“At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice” (Gore Vidal). In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee suggests that innocent people are so often misunderstood. Growing up in the small southern town of Maycomb County, young Scout learns through her father, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view… until you climb into their skin and walk around in it.” (Harper Lee 30). This is exemplified through the numerous victims of injustices within Maycomb, such as Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, and the mysterious Boo Radley.…
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.…
The author includes this theme to attempt to educate her readers that forming ideas about people, especially during a time of negative thinking towards a specific group of people, is not morally correct and people should make more of an effort to get to know someone before judgment. In a novel that attempts to lead people away from prejudgment of African American citizens, there are many cases in which African Americans are spoken negatively about without a reason. One of the main events that takes place in To Kill a Mockingbird is the trial between Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, and Bob Ewell. Mr. Ewell claimed to have seen Tom Robinson raping Mayella, Bob’s daughter, and decided to take the case to court. Before the trial, Tom was in a jail cell in the middle of the town when a lynch mob approached.…
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.…