The Coexistence of Good and Evil When a person takes his or her first steps into the world, he or she will finally be able to get a taste of the good and the bad in life. In the story “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the author Harper Lee displays the theme through the perspective of an innocent young girl, Scout, as she begins to reveal more about the world she lives in. Coexistence of good and evil is revealed through a case of an accused African American, causing not only Scout but the rest of the characters to change their perspectives towards their community. Through the contrasting beliefs and actions of the characters, the coexistence of both good and evil is exposed. Exploring and understanding different characters decisions and beliefs truly helps reveal human morality.
To kill a mocking bird by Harper Lee is a story of racial prejudice and social class, set in a time when such narrow mindedness was considered acceptable and apart of every day life in the small town of Maycomb. A widower, Atticus raises his children by himself, with the help of kindly neighbours and a black housekeeper named Calpurnia. Scout and Jem almost instinctively understand the complexities and machinations of their neighbourhood and town. This novel takes place in 1930’s in a typical southern society. Once Atticus chooses to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, Scout faces many challenges and she discovers numerous facts about life.
Atticus uses this approach not only with his children, but with all of Maycomb, and yet, for all of his mature treatment of Jem and Scout, he patiently recognizes that they are children and that they will make childish mistakes and assumptions. Ironically, Atticus’s one insecurity seems to be in the child-rearing department, and he often defends his ideas about raising children to those more experienced and more traditional. Atticus Finch isn’t just an ordinary father. He teaches his children things no parent of that time period, or even our time period would even think of doing. Atticus tries to show his children how the world works from other people’s point of view.
Describe at least one important setting in the text. Explain how the setting helped you to understand one or more important ideas in the text. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, both the time and place in which it was set help the reader to understand the important ideas of racial prejudice and classism which are present in the text. The novel takes place in Maycomb County, a fictional district in the south of Alabama, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The town is portrayed through the words of Scout Finch as a small, sleepy town, in which “a day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.” Due to the Great Depression, the people of Maycomb, even the well-off citizens like Atticus Finch, are all very poor and the exaggerated length of the days appears to owe to the fact that “there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.” The poorer citizens have to rely on trading with farming supplies and livestock as they, already indigent, were so further crippled by the depression that they have no real money to spend.
Question: Every time we read we lose a little piece of innocence. Discuss this proposition with reference to at least one text you have studied this year There are things in life that people don’t want to experience but they can experience it through reading. The loss of innocence is a major theme in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and this is an experience people can understand through reading. Harper Lees’ narrative text, To Kill a Mockingbird was written in the 1960’s. It is a recount of her childhood in the 1930’s represented through the character Scout and is centered on the conviction of a black man stating that he has raped a girl.
“To Kill A Mockingbird“: Literary Analysis Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird portrays life through a young girl’s eyes as she grows up and begins to realize that everything is not black and white. During a time where blacks were basically thought of as dirt and little girls were expected to sit still and help out around help put around the house, it is evident that that the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” is being put top good use. The basic theme of the novel is civil rights. What happens to Tom Robinson is an injustice, and could only happen to a black man in the South during the 1930s. It could even be said that the predominantly white justice system killed Tom Robinson.
To Kill A Mockingbird Analysis Social commentary is one of the driving forces of fiction writers. All have opinions of the society from in which they were reared causing many of their story driving characters to come from similar situations. One southern born woman, Harper Lee, followed this formula when writing her staunchly moral yet surprisingly youthful novel To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill A Mockingbird is set in Alabama before civil rights cases flooded the benches of justices and cases against African-Americans were considered open and closed. Through To Kill A Mockingbird, the reader puts on the shoes of a little girl, Scout, and traipses through this familiar town and learns of social injustice by seeing it affect not only a member of the town, but her own father.
Nick Salamone June 9th, 2009 Theme Analysis To Kill A Mockingbird is set in Alabama before civil rights cases were properly exposed of justices and cases against African-Americans were considered open. You find out that society can hurt innocent individuals who have littler power because of who they are. Through this novel, you put on the shoes of a small girl, Scout, and walks through a town where they learn of social inequality, coexistence of good and evil, and racism by seeing it through her father and life experiences. Race is a central issue in this time period. People aren't willing to accept change and theirs not much you can do in the 1930's to change that because it was "sociality acceptable" not to.
A Little Princess (1995) Part 1 The film A Little Princess (ALP) is a children’s story that also highlights social issues of Britain in the World War I time period. A child, watching this film, would be intrigued by the animated mind of the main character (Sara) and her vivid imagination. Her constant neglect from the malicious headmistress (Miss Minchin) endorsed her sympathy gained from the audience. Even as Miss Minchin mistreated Sara, her character grew tougher and her imagination grew stronger. Sara would use her fantasy stories to fill the void whenever she missed her father or felt hopeless.
Explore the ways in which Lee uses the minor characters to present key themes in To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee in the 1960s. However the plot of the novel is set during the economic depression and at a time when racism, segregation and sexism was rift throughout communities. The novel is set in a small town called Maycomb in the Southern States of America. Lee wrote the novel as if it was based in the 1930s and is written from the perspective of one of the major characters ‘Scout’ who is looking back on the major episodes in her childhood.