Change In To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird Essay 2008 Analyse how a text changed or challenged your opinion of an issue. The text To Kill a Mockingbird challenged my opinion of the issue of overcoming prejudice. Harper Lee enabled me to realise that change and increased tolerance is a gradual process and in the South, took a long time. It could not happen quickly as I had thought. Lee used repetition and listing to show the slow pace of Maycomb and the entrenched attitudes of the people. Later she used suspense and the mockingbird motif to show progress. To Kill A Mockingbird has become an American classic since it was first published in 1960. The story of an Alabama lawyer, Atticus Finch defending a negro, Tom Robinson, on a false rape charge, has become part…show more content…
Atticus’ children Jem and Scout have raced out of the court for supper and their father had said “I expect it’ll be over before you get back, anticipating that a white jury would quickly convict.” They returned to find the jury still out “bout thirty minutes.”Lee uses suspense as they wait. The time was “getting’ on towards eight” and still no sign. “Judge Taylor was asleep” and Scout remarks “I had never seen a packed courtroom so still”. “The Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical patience”. Lee allows us to measure the time and gives us hope for an unexpected verdict by measuring the time- ”the old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight deafening bongs that shook our bones.””When it bonged eleven times I was past feeling: tired from fighting sleep.” Our hopes are raised as we realise there must be extensive debate. Nevertheless the jury when polled pronounced “guilty…guilty…guilty While the use of suspense has turned out to have an anticlimactic result, we realise that it was significant. Miss Maudie explains that Atticus is “the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step –it’s just a baby step, but it’s a step.”Lee makes us understand that progress has been made through Atticus’ acknowledgement too “That was the one thing that made me think, well,, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took a few hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes ‘em just a few
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