How Does Harper Lee Present Ideas About Good and Bad in People

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Harper Lee in’ To Kill a Mockingbird’ presents the comparisons between the good and bad in people by using language, ideas and the perspective of a young girl. There are characters that stand out from the rest as a villain or the hero of the story or characters that are portrayed as the mysterious outcast but their true colours are shown towards the end of the novel. Whether they are a combination of both good or bad or just one of the options, Harper Lee manages to manipulate our emotions towards these figures by using the biased view of Scout Finch but nonetheless, the reader can interpret the characteristics of the people in Maycomb County in the way they talk, walk or even by their appearance and status. Atticus Finch, the father of Scout and Jem, can be described as the novel’s moral backbone as he shows consistent beliefs of justice, rises above discrimination and avoids ‘catching Maycomb’s usual disease’ (which represents the spreading opinion on racism). He proves himself to be a gentleman; ‘he just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face’ as his only reply to Bob Ewell’s spits, curses and threats that ‘wild horse could not bring’ Miss Stephanie to repeat. He is also a courageous man, perhaps not in the physical means and ‘with a gun in his hand’, but he ‘strolled on’ when Mr Ewell attempted to prompt him into a fight because of his ‘peaceful reaction’ and the way Harper Lee uses this adverb shows that Atticus sticks to his ideas of justice, is indifferent to violence and stays with the good. However, it is because of his kindness that he was first seen as’feeble’ and could not do ‘anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone’ which causes sympathy towards him as it is obvious his qualities of mental skills are far better than shooting a gun or smoking pot. Despite his children thinking he was dull at the beginning, he continues to
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