To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee. The novel takes place in a small southern town in the U.S. during the 1930s. The story is about a white lawyer named Atticus who defends an African American man who has been wrongly accused by a white woman of rape.
In the end, the African American man dies after losing the case and going to jail. This is all told through the perspective of Atticus’ young daughter Scout. A recurring theme throughout this book is discrimination, which will be discussed below with quotes from the book.
The kind of discrimination many Maycomb citizens engage in is blind and inconsiderate of others’ feelings. Just like what Dolphus Raymond says, “Cry about the simple hell people gives other people — without even thinking.
Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too (Lee 201),” Maycomb citizens discriminate without stopping to think that African Americans are people too, and they discriminate without looking inside themselves first to find the real reason that is triggering the discriminatory feelings. It is ignorance.
Discrimination in Maycomb is so widespread; it exists amongst white people too. This can be seen when Aunt Alexandria tells Scout why she couldn’t play with Walter Cunningham: “‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said. ‘because — he — is — trash, that’s why you can’t play with him (Lee 225).'”
Racism in Maycomb isn’t just the standard racial discrimination so common in the 30s, but also classism. The Cunninghams are really poor and do not bathe often. Walter is not very educated because he has to help out his father’s business. This causes people like Aunt Alexandria to look down on them.
Lastly, the biggest issue with Maycomb’s discrimination is that the citizens themselves do not see nor understand their discrimination. When a student asks Miss Gates why Germans dislike the Jews, she answers, “I don’t know, Henry. They contribute to every society they live in, and most of all, they are a deeply religious people (Lee 245).”
The very same traits for the Jews could be applied to African Americans. If the citizens of Maycomb cannot understand where the prejudice against Jews is coming from, how can they understand where their own prejudice is coming from? Their hatred towards African Americans is based on something insubstantial and weak.
