How Does Harper Lee Use Jim Crow Laws In To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. During this time period a lot of racism was in action, the Jim Crow Laws were one of the most major events that Harper Lee had to live through. The Jim Crow Laws are a practice or policy of segregating or discriminating against blacks, as in public places, public vehicles, or employment. The majority of the people in her community were racist, but Lee knew the ways African Americans were treated just wasn’t right. Her father defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper, but both clients were hung. Harper Lee uses both events from her own experiences and historical events, to form To Kill a Mockingbird. She uses characterizes characters in her novel off her
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She focuses on one character exclusively as the story goes along and his name is Bob Ewell. Every reader knows the nasty name, "It’s against the law, all right ... and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit." ( Lee, 31) Throughout the book we grow an unbelieveable amount of hate towards Bob, but only one thing keeps some readers from siding with him during his appearance in court. The fact that he is racist just like everyone else in Maycomb. Harper Lee makes Bob seen this way to try and have the common southern readers get a step closer to changing their thoughts and actions towards African Americans. The audience knows his accusation that Tom Robinson raped his daughter is false, but the racist readers doesn’t want to side with a black man. Ewell represents the dark side of the south. As Bob’s daughter, Mayella, testifies against Tom, we as readers can tell just how scared Mayella is of her father and she would change the story whenever she would look his way. “No, I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”(Ch.18) Mayella fears that if she says one thing wrong that her father with beat her again. This truly gets to the Southern readers, because women are suppose to be treated with the
She focuses on one character exclusively as the story goes along and his name is Bob Ewell. Every reader knows the nasty name, "It’s against the law, all right ... and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit." ( Lee, 31) Throughout the book we grow an unbelieveable amount of hate towards Bob, but only one thing keeps some readers from siding with him during his appearance in court. The fact that he is racist just like everyone else in Maycomb. Harper Lee makes Bob seen this way to try and have the common southern readers get a step closer to changing their thoughts and actions towards African Americans. The audience knows his accusation that Tom Robinson raped his daughter is false, but the racist readers doesn’t want to side with a black man. Ewell represents the dark side of the south. As Bob’s daughter, Mayella, testifies against Tom, we as readers can tell just how scared Mayella is of her father and she would change the story whenever she would look his way. “No, I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”(Ch.18) Mayella fears that if she says one thing wrong that her father with beat her again. This truly gets to the Southern readers, because women are suppose to be treated with the