To Kill A Mocking Bird :: To Kill a Mockingbird Essays

Discrimination, this is a word that is heard today and was heard especially in the southern U.S. in the early 1900’s. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the character Scout who is portrayed as a Tomboy and coincidentally the author witnessed numerous times to the outwardly prejudice people of Maycomb Co., Alabama as a very young girl. These prejudices that were heard throughout the entire novel are separated into three categories: racism, sexism, and lifestyles discrimination. Racial discrimination was the most prominent, which as Harper Lee pointed out, was not just limited to the Caucasian population of Maycomb. One of these instances was when Lula commented on the Finch children coming to a historically all black church. Another less prominent form of this reverse discrimination would be the fact that the African people of Maycomb tended to assume that all white people in Maycomb had a deep hatred for blacks, and so they also treated all of them as prejudiced people. But, the black population, by far was discriminated against the most. For instance the many times Scout was told her father defended niggers, and was a nigger lover. One of these times would be when Francis states, "I guess it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is nigger lover"(83). And although Scout didn't truly know the meanings of these statements seemingly rooted into the core of many Maycomb residents, she did sense that they were not statements of praise and accomplishment. Another type of prejudice in the novel would be the sexism and resulting stereotypical views of how women and men should act, dress, and what they can and cannot do. A good example of this being the many times a neighbor of the Finches’, Mrs. Dubose made statements like, "What are you doing in overalls. If you don't start acting proper you will end up serving tables"(101). This would consider being the vast majority of this sexism was aimed at women and girls. They were constantly told what was proper and lady-like and what they should dress like to look like a lady. These so called ideals were not only reinforced and taught by men but also by women. Scout was one of the minorities of people who didn't conform to these ideals and was therefore ridiculed by the closed-minded people of Maycomb. The third and final form of prejudice is actually a combination of the other two types of prejudice, this prejudice being the discrimination against non-conforming lifestyles.