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, mixer prejudice and religious prejudice. These three are the types of prejudice most preponderating in To Kill A Mockingbird. The setting for the story is a fictitious townspeople 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 racialism in the southern United States in the 1930s. This racism mainly originated from the civilised war, which lasted from 1875 to 1883. The northern, more progressive states declared slavery prohibited, exclusively 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 confirm slaves the south still kept slaves illegally. This was the main cause of the civil war. The n orthern states won the war and the United States was formed. Even though they lost(p) the war, the south passed their own Jim Crow Laws in the 1900s making racial segregation legal. The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the confederation fuelled racism in Maycomb. These banish qualities account for the tender and religious prejudices in the novel. The communitys 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 outlying(prenominal) from the river, which was the main form of transport in the early days. This confines the towns development and leads to the social conditioning of the people this in enactment 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 coevals t o generation. Maycomb town is described well in chapter 1 as it tells us why the people are so insular and inward looking. Maycomb was an senior town, only if it was a tired old town.This statement puts a oppose light on Maycomb and its people. The personification of the word tired emphasises the lack of enthusiasm, slightly everything, the people of Maycomb have. It also suggests an unwillingness and lack of desire to change this fact. fatigue... ...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 dont align to Maycombs 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 washables Baptists. Racial prejudice in Maycomb is constan tly 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 two-baser standards. They say they have sympathy for other races in other countries but then they treat the ethnic minority in their town with large(p) disrespect. The prejudice of the town is produced from fear, historical context and their social conditioning. They are claustrophobic because of ignorance and not being able to understand new and different things.