Prejudice in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee Essay -- To Kill a Mo

Prejudice is the preconceived opinion of a person or thing. There are three main types of prejudice: racial prejudice, social prejudice and religious prejudice. These three are the types of prejudice most dominant in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. The setting for the novel is a fictitious town called Maycomb. This town is situated in Alabama, south USA. The racial prejudice shown in the novel has a lot to do with the town being situated in the southern United States. This is because there was a lot of racism in the southern United States in the 1930’s. This racism mainly originated from the civil war, which lasted from 1875 to 1883. The northern, more progressive states declared slavery illegal, but slavery was a vital part of the southern economy as the labour was cheap for the cotton plantation owners. Although the northern states made it illegal to have slaves the south still kept slaves illegally. This was the main cause of the civil war. The northern states won the war and the United States was formed. Even though they lost the war, the south passed their own ‘Jim Crow Laws’ in the 1900’s making racial segregation legal. The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the community fuelled racism in Maycomb. These negative qualities account for the social and religious prejudices in the novel. The community’s narrow-mindedness is formed because the population has been unchanged for many decades with the same families occupying the town. This causes prejudice towards anything that is different from the norm. Maycomb is very backward and isolated due to the town being far from the river, which was the main form of transport in the early days. This confines the town’s development and leads to the social conditioning of the people this in turn helps to explain why there is social and religious prejudice. Maycomb people have very inward looking views and so these views are passed on from generation to generation. Maycomb town is described well in chapter 1 as it tells us why the people are so insular and inward looking. â€Å"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town.† This statement puts a negative light on Maycomb and its people. The personification of the word tired emphasises the lack of enthusiasm, about everything, the people of Maycomb have. It also suggests an unwillingness and lack of desire to change this fact. ‘Tired’... ...ters in the novel such as Boo Radley, Dolphus Raymond and to a lesser extent Miss Maudie. These people are often excluded by the society. This social prejudice leads to the exclusion of families such as the Ewells and the Cunninghams because they don’t conform to Maycomb’s belief of normality. They are treated like outsiders with suspicion and are stereotyped. The religious prejudice in Maycomb leads to the persecution of Miss Maudie Atkinson by the foot washing Baptists. Racial prejudice in Maycomb is constantly displayed by the white community toward the black community. The most glaring example of racism in the novel is when Tom Robinson is convicted of raping Mayella Ewell just because he dared to feel sorry for her. The result of this racial prejudice leads the people of Maycomb to be very hypocritical and have double standards. They say they have sympathy for other races in other countries but then they treat the ethnic minority in their town with great disrespect. The prejudice of the town is produced from fear, historical context and their social conditioning. They are afraid because of ignorance and not being able to understand new and different things.