“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it” (Lee, 33). Atticus says this to Scout after she gets mad that Miss Caroline does not understand Maycomb’s ways. This theme can be seen all throughout To Kill a Mockingbird because the book includes real life examples of racism and hardships. Empathy is very important in this book because there is a lot of discrimination, especially against African Americans. Harper Lee uses events like the Jim Crow laws and instances of mob mentality as inspiration as she is writing this book.
The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were discriminatory and …show more content…
Mob mentality can be really scary and alarming. Mob mentality is behavior that emerges when people are in a group. It is often violent or impulsive. Mob mentality happens because people believe that if someone else is doing a certain thing, it must be worth it or else they would not be doing it. They often are not thinking, or what they are doing comes naturally. Peer pressure influences these decisions a lot (Smith). This shows that people do not really have a control over their mind when participating in mob mentality and often act without thinking. Behaviors of mob mentality are that people are aggressive and it is chaotic. They follow what everyone else is doing and do not really think about their actions (Smith). This reinforces that people act almost involuntarily under the influence of peer pressure and mob mentality. Mob mentality can be seen in To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways. An example of mob mentality is, “if a person is in a group that is vandalizing a building, he or she might believe that there is less of a chance of getting caught than if he or she was acting alone, because it might be difficult to identify every person who was involved” (Smith 1). This appears in To Kill a Mockingbird when the mob gathers outside the jail. They want to get Tom Robinson and they probably intend to lynch him. Atticus stands his ground and is trying to make them leave. Scout and Jem show up, and …show more content…
If people were more empathetic and made better connections to other real world events, they could understand that what they are doing is very wrong. The Holocaust was going on at the same time as this book, and it is even mentioned in one scene. Scout’s class talks about how awful and wrong it is to discriminate against the Jews, and Scout’s teacher says there is no prejudice in the United States. She was almost turning a blind eye to all the lynchings and acts of racism happening all around her. Maybe if people just looked around them a little more, none of this would have
The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws were discriminatory and …show more content…
Mob mentality can be really scary and alarming. Mob mentality is behavior that emerges when people are in a group. It is often violent or impulsive. Mob mentality happens because people believe that if someone else is doing a certain thing, it must be worth it or else they would not be doing it. They often are not thinking, or what they are doing comes naturally. Peer pressure influences these decisions a lot (Smith). This shows that people do not really have a control over their mind when participating in mob mentality and often act without thinking. Behaviors of mob mentality are that people are aggressive and it is chaotic. They follow what everyone else is doing and do not really think about their actions (Smith). This reinforces that people act almost involuntarily under the influence of peer pressure and mob mentality. Mob mentality can be seen in To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways. An example of mob mentality is, “if a person is in a group that is vandalizing a building, he or she might believe that there is less of a chance of getting caught than if he or she was acting alone, because it might be difficult to identify every person who was involved” (Smith 1). This appears in To Kill a Mockingbird when the mob gathers outside the jail. They want to get Tom Robinson and they probably intend to lynch him. Atticus stands his ground and is trying to make them leave. Scout and Jem show up, and …show more content…
If people were more empathetic and made better connections to other real world events, they could understand that what they are doing is very wrong. The Holocaust was going on at the same time as this book, and it is even mentioned in one scene. Scout’s class talks about how awful and wrong it is to discriminate against the Jews, and Scout’s teacher says there is no prejudice in the United States. She was almost turning a blind eye to all the lynchings and acts of racism happening all around her. Maybe if people just looked around them a little more, none of this would have