Preview

Examples Of Macrocosm In To Kill A Mockingbird

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
To what extent is ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ a critique of the values promoted in Maycomb society?

Maycomb County is its own little world, made of real people but it reflects the wider world of America in terms of its attitudes, issues and characters. It, the microcosm which reflects the macrocosm of America, such as the way blacks are regarded and treated.

The story is told from a viewpoint of a growing 6 year old child, Scout Finch. So we are seeing situations from an innocent ‘eye’, ‘she looked and smelled like a peppermint drop’ after the misinforming way the child regards adults and the way they act and talk. This sober judgement is a truth to be understood by all young people because they don’t understand certain things in life.
…show more content…

This again highlights her innocence and that she’ll soon learn to discover that things change in life and one must accept them.
Scout represents how people develop attitudes because of a lack of knowledge. For example, she imagines Boo Radley being a ‘malevolent phantom’ which is based purely on hearsay. She comes to learn that people can be different yet there need be no prejudice against them. This is shown by the way she grew to understand Boo Radley and really she’s teaching a lesson to the community through the words and visions of the writer. This idea is portrayed in the New Testament where children, without prejudging through their innocence, show adults the way they should
…show more content…

One lady in particular was singled out for a critical portrait and that was the schoolteacher of Scout who should have known better. Mrs. Caroline Fisher objected that Scout had been taught to read at home and therefore wanted her to start afresh than building on whatever had been done. ‘When Miss. Caroline threatened…’
The ‘ladies’ will become an increasing influence on Scout on the absence of her mother; they mean well and wish to be of use, but they find it difficult to move away from their traditional attitudes of the South, which saw slavery as an unchallenged way of life and white superiority is the norm.
This has been so true of school teachers over the years, who don’t want parents to interfere with education and it is only recently that a more open attitude has been shown by the education profession where they will encourage and build on skills for the more


You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Atticus Finch Empathy

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird takes place in rural south Alabama in a town called Maycomb during the Great Depression, in a time when many Southerners both accepted and expected discrimination toward minorities. Atticus Finch, a widowed father of two, trying to raise his children well, teaches them to see things from another’s perspective. Lee incorporates the crucial quality of empathy in the feelings of the characters and expresses the empathetic theme with the influence of racism and prejudice in Maycomb society within the main characters Scout, Jem, and Atticus.…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the 1930’s in Maycomb Alabama, prejudicial, preconceived and hypocritical views reigned over empathetic and open-minded attitudes, but by Harper Lee’s use of Scout as the protagonist in the novel, a sense of hope is created. Scout represents exploration and the need for knowledge and through using her as the protagonist, harper lee can convey that through having an educated and understanding generation, there is hope for the future. Scout, being the daughter of the most progressive thinking man in Maycomb, is able to empathise with many people and through using her optimism and developing views and opinions she is able to “finally see” that most people are “real nice” if you get to know them and prove that there is a real sense of hope carried throughout To Kill a mockingbird.…

    • 875 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scout is a very courageous young girl. In chapter two she speaks on behalf of the children in her class to their new teacher Miss Caroline. This took courage because she gets in trouble for most everything she says to Miss Caroline. “Impatience crept into Miss Caroline’s voice: “Here Walter, come get…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When describing Maycomb in the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee paraphrases Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Lee uses this quote to show that the people in Maycomb should be afraid of the fact they are afraid of something for no reason. This fear of change stems from prejudice: there are four kinds of folks in this world, there’s the ordinary kind like us, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams, the kind like the Ewells and the Negroes.” Lee has purposely created Maycomb as a town separated by race; by doing this she illustrates a small town during the depression of the early 1930s. The system of “four kinds of folks” does not leave room for individuality let alone breaking with the past and striking off in a new direction. The way things are in Maycomb are the way things have always been and there is not much anyone can do about it.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Is Scout Finch Innocent

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The first trait scout is portrayed to be is literate. She is above her peers expectations when it comes to her literacy. Scout says “She discovered I was iterate, and looked at me with faint distaste”(Lee 17). Miss Caroline, Scout’s teacher, is in distaste because she was yet to see a young literate child, and because of this, Scout gets unwanted tension between…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scouts education level is higher than most first graders. Scout loves to read and she spends most of her time doing it. She even has the ability to write in cursive. Scout proves her intelligence towards the beginning of the novel when she is in school. Miss Caroline is…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Childhood is a crucial time in everyone’s life, as it affects the decisions they make later on. In fact in some cases, our childhood determines who we are, or whom we’ll become in the future. A child’s childhood must be kept innocent and pure for the well being of the their future. The recurring theme in Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals, is the loss of innocence at a young age, led by the choices and decisions of the characters, and this theme can be connected back to the novel itself, Alden Nowlan’s short story, The Fall of a City, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.…

    • 1775 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scouts actions in the story drive her personality and thinking. When she fights kids at school defending her dad, she shows her weakness in her tolerance. In the middle of the story she sneaks into the court room to watch the Tom Robinson trial, this shows that she will find a way to get what she wants. At the end of the story she meets Arthur Radley, this changes her perspective on how she looks at people. Scouts actions point to the story's…

    • 371 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old one when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop, grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter than a black dog suffered on a summer 's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men 's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after three o 'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of swear and sweet talcum." Lee uses imagery, similes, and metaphors to paint the setting of Maycomb, Alabama in the early 1900 's. She uses personification to describe the town as 'tired. ' Lee depicts the town 's appearance is during different…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Firstly, Scout and Jem Finch learn the following lesson: don’t judge people by your own standards, especially when you are more privileged than they are. In Maycomb County, many people were poorer than the Finch’s were. For example, a specific family, the Cunningham’s, were known all around Maycomb for being one of the lowliest families. When Walter, one of the Cunningham children, went over to the Finch’s house for dinner one afternoon, he began pouring molasses all over his food. Pouring the hot syrupy mixture on food must have been a custom in the Cunningham family, but Scout, however, thought it was disgusting. In front of everyone at the dinner table, including her father and Calpurnia, their maid, Scout began to protest the fact that he had drowned his dinner in syrup, and that it was highly repulsive. Upon hearing Scout’s blatant distaste, Calpurnia pulled Scout into the kitchen to yell at her. Calpurnia told Scout that when they have company, she must be respectful of their ways, since not everyone eats like they do. When Scout…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of To Kill a Mockingbird, in a small Alabama community is constructed from the contradictions of Christianity and prejudice. Through prejudice and bigotry, the Southern society builds a strong sense of integrity that masks their immoral prejudice. The Southern culture of Maycomb derives from the antebellum culture of Christianity and slavery. The morals of slavery greatly clashed with the morals of Christianity. While Southerners desperately needed slavery, they also needed to maintain their Christian sense of integrity that stated all of humankind must be…

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The events of the book took place in Maycomb; a small old town known for its prejudicing environment. In the begging of the book “to kill a mockingbird,” we are given an insight of how Maycomb’s society works. Maycomb is not really known for multiculturalism,…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the past years women have been fighting for equal rights, but in the year 1933 it was pushed on to young girls to be a “proper lady” meaning to serve the husband and have a woman’s first interest in the well being of men. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is about childhood and growing up with Scout. The narrator, Scout has been taught like an adult by her father for her whole life and gender was never a problem with Atticus, he taught her and her brother Jem the same way, but as she grows up she is pressured to become a proper lady by her peers. We can gather that gender roles are a major part in Scout’s life by the several symbols of women, such as flowers, that show, the theme of gender roles that Harper Lee weaves into To Kill a Mockingbird.…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We all have a point in life where we go through many stages of growing up and realizing that all things don’t come easy, and sometimes even though you know it’s the right thing it still doesn’t happen to be what you thought. In the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the young girl scout experiences this throughout the whole book and learns that innocent people are sometimes destroyed by evil. She is just a young girl finally noticing the real world, and how you don’t know anything until you’re in it’s place realizing it yourself, just like being “In another man’s shoes and walking around in them.” In this essay I will be explaining the elements of the story, Setting, Flashback, and Diction.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maycomb is a small Southern town. The stereotypical Southern town for the time it’s in. Everyone knows everyone’s business, which can brew up drama harmless or dangerous, it also makes the community closer socially. In the beginning of the book it shows the closeness of the community and how they were all one family in some way, when Scout and Jem were young that’s what the believed their small town of Maycomb was. In a way they are right Maycomb is small, safe, and peaceful community. Although when they get older and wiser they see the other darker side of the town. The highly illogical social status which is based on wealth, history and one of the biggest issues race. The community doesn’t agree with change and greatly dislike others who…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays