Darker side of life – prejudice! Explain why…
Prejudice is an example of the less pleasant side of life. Prejudice is where we judge people without really knowing what they are like, and we see an example of this in the way the children assume Boo Radley is a monster without having ever really seen him. They later discover they were wrong. Racial prejudice was common in the South of the USA in the 1930s because of the history of slavery there, and the white population's fears after it was abolished after the American Civil War. It meant that white people judged black people without knowing what they were really like, and felt they were inferior. This led to terrible cruelty and injustice, sometimes in the form of lynchings which were intended to keep black people afraid. One of the black characters says, "I ain’t never seen any jury decide in favour of a coloured man over a white man’. This shows how prejudice makes justice impossible. To prove this, in "To Kill a Mockingbird" Tom Robinson is threatened by a mob who clearly intended to lynch him without a fair trial, and even when he has been tried and proved by Atticus to be incapable of the rape he was accused of, he is still found guilty, because the all white jury were unable to accept a white man could have lied. When Tom is shot trying to escape we can see that an innocent man like him cannot find justice in a prejudiced place like Maycomb. This certainly shows us the less pleasant side of life.
Boo Radley and Tom Robinson – how structure helps make a deeper point about prejudice (technique)
Main Points:
Boo Radley story shows prejudice from a child's point of view
no surprise that children judge from feelings rather than knowledge
Tom Robinson story shows prejudice in adults
it is a surprise that adults judge from feelings, even when they know the feelings are wrong.
Prejudice is an example of the less pleasant side of life. Prejudice is where we judge people without really knowing what they are like, and we see an example of this in the way the children assume Boo Radley is a monster without having ever really seen him. They later discover they were wrong. Racial prejudice was common in the South of the USA in the 1930s because of the history of slavery there, and the white population's fears after it was abolished after the American Civil War. It meant that white people judged black people without knowing what they were really like, and felt they were inferior. This led to terrible cruelty and injustice, sometimes in the form of lynchings which were intended to keep black people afraid. One of the black characters says, "I ain’t never seen any jury decide in favour of a coloured man over a white man’. This shows how prejudice makes justice impossible. To prove this, in "To Kill a Mockingbird" Tom Robinson is threatened by a mob who clearly intended to lynch him without a fair trial, and even when he has been tried and proved by Atticus to be incapable of the rape he was accused of, he is still found guilty, because the all white jury were unable to accept a white man could have lied. When Tom is shot trying to escape we can see that an innocent man like him cannot find justice in a prejudiced place like Maycomb. This certainly shows us the less pleasant side of life.
Boo Radley and Tom Robinson – how structure helps make a deeper point about prejudice (technique)
Main Points: