To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is
unarguably one of the merit of American literature It’s the representation of
an important era in U.S history. By describing the lives under the Great
Depression in a southern small town, Maycomb, To Kill A Mockingbird reveals the
permanent themes of the perplexity human nature, hypocrisy, racial and sexual
inequity, and the nonavailability of becoming apathetic in the way to adulthood.
These themes are the deep and profound introspection of our civilization that even
decades pass, its value never faded.
A
person is hard to explicitly define as good or evil, most of the time these two
contrary attributes coexist in same person. Mrs. Dubose, a vicious racist, who
had poured her mean curses about Atticus on two innocent children, eventually reveals
her nobility as the story advance. It turns out that she was morphine addicted,
and knowing her days will soon come, decided to "leave this world beholden
to nothing and nobody", even though that means afflicting insufferable
pain. At this point, all the arbitrary labels about this lady vanished. A man's
nature is far beyond our comprehension, but our judgments are often arbitrary
and mist by our naive prejudice and preoccupation. We are stubborn and
hardheaded to rely on our biased understanding of others, which makes the scene
of posing morality sanctimoniously and accuse others so common in our
civilization. Perhaps the only way to detach from this bigotry is, as Atticus
said: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from
his point of view", transposition consideration.
As
the material civilization progressing, people wear their personage in front of
others, hypocrisy become part of the everyday lives. To Kill A Mockingbird
accurately criticize this phenomenon. The most representative scene is the
refreshment of the Missionary Circle. While Mrs. Merriweather kept on boasting
her congregations’ achievements on aiding the Mrunas tribe in Africa, she
ignores the poverty inside her community. Good deeds become the capital of
showing off of her; the most benevolent intention isn't pure anymore.
Racial and sexual discrimination are also the main theme of the book.
Tom Robinson, the tragic figure of the story, who had been wrongly accused to
rape a white girl. Even though the evidence clearly supports his innocence, he
was still judge by his color of skin and been convicted. The scenario seems to
be exaggerated, but that was exactly what had happened on history. People bear an
innate prejudice, believed in the racial supremacy and inferiority, ignoring
the fact that "all man are created equal". This foolishness incurred
the misery of an entire race for years. Sexual discrimination is also implied
in the book. Scout was constantly required by Aunt Alexandra to behave well and
be a lady. The women's position was defined and solidified in that time, cut
off all the other potentials and possibility of women----they were subjected to
the social norm of male chauvinism.
The
last theme, and the most interesting theme, Lee tried to convey was child has
more wisdom than adults due to their innocence. In the scene of Dill and Scout
went out of the court and met Mr. Raymond, they discovered Mr. Raymond was
pretending alcoholic to give the folk a reason about him staying with colored
race. When Dill and Scout ask him why him tell them this, Mr. Raymond answered:
"Because you are children and you can understand it." Our mind, by
the influence of the education and social norms, are stuck into stereotypes and
lost the capacity of comprehension. We start to observe this world through the
lens of our ossification, rather than acquire information from fact itself.
Thus, we become more stubborn and thus, we become more apathetic. Children's innocence
is the purity of the world, fortunately we were born with it, but we lost in
gradually during our way to adulthood. The world can only be harmonious and
beautiful when all men are spiritually children, as the quote on the preface of
To Kill A Mockingbird, "Lawyer, I suppose, were children once."
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