Skip to main content

What is a quote in To Kill A Mockingbird that supports the fact that one of the reasons racism was so widespread in Maycomb was due to the fact...

There are a couple of quotes that support the idea that racism was widespread in Maycomb.  During the 1930’s in the South, segregation was a way of life and no one questioned it.  I think perhaps the best example of this is Jem’s reflection on the four kinds of people in Maycomb.



“…I’ve thought about it a lot lately and I’ve got it figured out. There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.” (Ch. 23) 



Jem is young, and hopeful.  He is coming of age, and trying to understand the way the world works.  This is the realization that he has come to—the world is divided by class and race.  The “Negroes” are on the bottom of his list because they are on the bottom of Maycomb’s social hierarchy.  It is just the way it is.  While we see racism as wrong today, in Maycomb it is totally normal. 


Another good example of the explanation of the widespread nature of racism comes from Dolphus Raymond.  Raymond has to live outside the normal social structure of whites in Maycomb because he married a black woman and had children with her.  Therefore, they don’t belong anywhere in Maycomb.  They don’t fit in with the whites or the blacks. 


During the trial, Dill gets very upset at the way Tom Robinson is being treated, especially by the prosecution.  Mr. Gilmer patronizes and belittles him endlessly, calling him “boy.”  It turns Dill’s stomach, literally. 



He jerked his head at Dill: “Things haven’t caught up with that one’s instinct yet.


Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being—not quite right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him.” (Ch. 20) 



Raymond is explaining to the children that racism is just a way of life in Maycomb.  He does not approve.  That’s why he lives the way he does.  However, everyone else in Maycomb just accepts this as the way things are.  Maybe someday things will change, because children like Dill think that it's wrong.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more