How Does Lee Present Racism In To Kill A Mockingbird

1151 Words5 Pages
Forever, racism has gripped our nation, all the way from the the slave trade to now. Even though the face of it has changed, it still lingers. Racism even occurs in literature, and was the main focal point of Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, by displaying the Tom Robinson case. In this book, it was an extremely racist time that affected everybody (Appositive Phrase), from education to the court of law. One of the main reasons why this book circled around racism is because it was an earlier time, in the 1930s. So, whites really didn’t understand blacks, which made them never see them as real people. Atticus is one of the book’s main characters, and he is one of the few white men that actually see through a person’s skin color (Prepositional…show more content…
This was demonstrated in the book when Calpurnia (Participial Phrase), a black maid, took the kids, who are white, to her church. When they got there, they couldn’t even get through the door before they heard from Lula. “Lula stopped, but she said, "You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal?" (Lee 119). Although, she was the only one who tried to make this point (Infinitive Phrase), in fact, she was dismissed from the situation by the other church attendees. “One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. "Mister Jem," he said, "we're mighty glad to have you all here. Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She's a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways—we're mighty glad to have you all" (Lee 119). Lula prooved that there are some black people that are racist, however, at the same time, Zeebo proves that most…show more content…
One event that people used was the Tom Robinson trial. A white woman by the name of Mayella Ewell accused Tom of rape, so, as predicted, the society of Maycomb took this case and used it to their advantage. They used it as proof that black men prowl for white women and are all the same. Atticus also took some blows for defending Tom in court, when Scout asked him about it, he said, “I’m simply defending a [black man]-his name’s Tom Robinson. He lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump. He’s a member of Calpurnia’s church, and Cal knows his family well. She says they’re clean-living folks” (Lee 75). A person who could feel empathy for Atticus is Dolphus Raymond. He decided to live a life (Infinitive Phrase) with a black family and was scolded by Maycomb for it. To make it look like he couldn’t help what situation he was in, he pretended to be the town drunk by drinking Coca-Cola from a brown bag whenever he went into town. When he explained his ways to the children, he said, “Some folks don’t-like the way I live. Now I could say the [hay] with ‘em, I don’t care if they don’t like it. I do say I don’t care if they don’t like it, right enough-but I don’t say the [hay] with ‘em, see?’” (Lee 200). It is shown that in both cases, black people had to deal with extreme
Open Document