A life lesson

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel full of social injustice and racial prejudice. While one might think that is the extent of the depth of the novel that is far from the truth. Harper Lee uses social injustice and racial prejudice to show the reader that our differences are not what matters, it is how we react to those differences that is important.

The first example Lee uses is that of Dill Harris. He is a boy who comes to live beside Jem and Scout, two of the main characters, for the summer. Dill is an odd boy. He tells 'stories', is very small for his age, and is just generally weird. At first Jem and Scout don't know what to think of him however after taking the time to get to know him they discover what a wonderful friend and playmate Dill is. Lee uses Dill as a small first lesson in the unimportance of differences.

The next example she uses is that of the African American community. One man in particular, Tom Robinson, seems to represent everything that community stands for, at least in the eyes of the townspeople. Tom is accused of raping a white woman and stands trial over a three year period. Jem and Scout's father, Atticus Finch, defends Tom and proves in court that it could not possibly have been Tom who perpetrated the crime. Despite the compelling evidence in Tom's favour, the all white jury finds Tom guilty and sentences him to die.

"A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson." ...."I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: 'Guilty...guilty...guilty...guilty...'"

This example is the most obvious one that Lee uses of the intolerance of people to those who are different.

The third example Lee uses is that of the children, Jem and Scout, and the mysterious 'Boo' Radley. Mr. Radley is the town recluse who has been inside for 15 years. The children know nothing concrete about him. The rumours surrounding Mr. Radley that circulate around the town however have led the children to fear and dislike him. He is as diametrically different to everyone else as one could get. Or so they think. At the end of the book both Jem and Scout change thier minds about the importance of differences. Boo Radley ends up saving Jem and Scout from a knife weilding drunken excuse for a human, Mr. Ewell, the father of the girl whom Tom Robinson was accused of raping. The children realize that Boo is different from them, those differences are nothing to fear.

Harper Lee does a wonderful job teaching the importance of looking at a person, not their differences, while using social injustice and racial prejudice as the moral stepping stones of her lesson.