Analysis: To Kill a Mockingbird

ill TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ESSAY Discrimination is defined as acts or attitudes based on prejudice, unfairness or injustice towards a particular group of people. In our current times there is still discrimination, some of which stems from long ago. “To Kill a Mockingbird” takes place in the early 1930s when discrimination was not only tolerated, it was encouraged by many. The types of discrimination in this novel are much more extreme than they are today. Times have changed and there is still prejudice, unfairness, and injustice for many; however, it doesn’t compare to how different times were when this book takes place and the discrimination people had to go through. Boo Radley is a young man who has grown up dealing with social discrimination from his family and the community around him. He has dealt with his family being ashamed of him, and the small southern town that he has grown up in ignoring him. In addition to Boo Radley, there is another character in this book that experienced discrimination; Tom Robinson went through racial discrimination. He is treated like a second class citizen when he is falsely accused of raping a white woman. Because of the colour of his skin, others believed the lies told about him and as a result he was punished for a crime he didn’t commit. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, there are many types of discrimination but there are two that stand out the most; social discrimination and racial discrimination are shown by Tom Robinson and Boo Radley.

In Maycomb Boo Radley is a social outcast. His father did not want him to go to public schools and instead kept him in his house. Because of this, rumours started to spread about Boo Radley being insane and that Boo stabbed his father in the leg with scissors and as a consequence his father chained him up in the house. For these rumours kids in Maycomb feared Boo. "What are you doin' way out here by yourself, boy? Ain't you scared of Boo Radley?” This quote is of one of the boys who came