To Kill a Mockingbird Essay

Submitted By militarywife
Words: 717
Pages: 3

Judgment yesterday, today, and tomorrow To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, has been rendered as one of the greatest novels of all time. Harper Lee’s book has been read and reread over and over again by millions of people across the globe. Readers are drawn into the book because of how powerfully the words speak to them; and one of the most prominent themes in the book, the theme that outshines all others, is the way society immediately categorizes a person or group of people by the color of their skin, how they socialize, or even by their actions. Rudolph Bourne once said, “Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue it likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.”(Think, 1) The typical stereotype against African-Americans had been going on for years before Lee’s prize novel was written, but never had their been a book in that time that truly spoke to the people, and even today has the same effect as it did fifty years ago when the novel was published. The society has always judged people by the color of their skin. When Harper Lee wrote her book, it just happened to be the African-American population who were getting picked on. Today, fifty years later, it’s not so much the African-American race, but the Hispanic race. Before even bothering to get to know the people who have different colored skin, the society judge them by what they have heard from other people or what they have read or seen somewhere, and then categorize them into a group they won’t associate with, therefore, they would never actually meet these people to see if what they thought was true. Besides the color of a person’s skin, society also categorizes people by the way they socialize. Don’t say “hi” when another person is walking by and the society immediately declares that person rude or unfriendly, when the actual reality might be that that person merely didn’t hear them. The society will also judge a person by whether or not a person participates in community get-togethers. They, the society, even judge people by the way they socialize. In Harper Lee’s book Stephanie Crawford was the town gossip because she would not stop socializing and the Radleys were foot washing Baptist because they seldom came out of their house and hardly ever spoke a word, which leads to how the society judges other people by their actions. The society in today’s world is not much different from the fictional one Lee created fifty years ago. The biggest similarity is the way society judges a person because of how