Mockingbird By Walter Tevis: An Analysis
According to the Health and Wellness Resource Center, people with high IQ’s, especially those who abuse drugs, are most likely to commit suicide. In the novel, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, humans are dependent on narcotics to live through a world of illiteracy which results in suicidal thoughts throughout the population. As it was written during the years leading up to1980, Mockingbird is somewhat a reaction to the author’s world as it portrays the rise of narcotics in the 70’s, while contradicting the increase in reading and writing scores in America, but duplicating the growth of suicides throughout the author’s lifetime.
The medical purposes of sedatives are to relieve the consumer from stress and slow down brain activity. Although, such …show more content…
Reading was slowly taken out of school curriculum and was no longer necessary as people were dependent on technology to do everything for them. Even though illiteracy is common throughout the novel, American literacy rates were up to 99% and still are for both males and females in the decade before its publication (Central Intelligence Agency). In this government controlled dystopia, reading first became obsolete and then eventually became a crime. Sopor prevented people from learning how to read or comprehend numbers, because of the effects it has on the human mind. On the contrary, during the 1970’s literacy rates were higher than ever before. Just two decades before, more than half of the American population only had an eighth grade education, but by 1979 the illiteracy rate was 0.6% (Snyder). Before writing this novel, Tevis worked as a professor at Ohio University where he noticed falling literacy rates. Although, according to studies done during that time, reading scores had been increasing, whereas dropout rates were decreasing (Children Reading Better than Those in 50's, Study Finds). Tevis’ claims could merely be of personal opinion, as the study Reading Achievement in the United States: Then and Now conducted by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1975, stated that “anyone who says that he knows that literacy is decreasing is a very unsure
The medical purposes of sedatives are to relieve the consumer from stress and slow down brain activity. Although, such …show more content…
Reading was slowly taken out of school curriculum and was no longer necessary as people were dependent on technology to do everything for them. Even though illiteracy is common throughout the novel, American literacy rates were up to 99% and still are for both males and females in the decade before its publication (Central Intelligence Agency). In this government controlled dystopia, reading first became obsolete and then eventually became a crime. Sopor prevented people from learning how to read or comprehend numbers, because of the effects it has on the human mind. On the contrary, during the 1970’s literacy rates were higher than ever before. Just two decades before, more than half of the American population only had an eighth grade education, but by 1979 the illiteracy rate was 0.6% (Snyder). Before writing this novel, Tevis worked as a professor at Ohio University where he noticed falling literacy rates. Although, according to studies done during that time, reading scores had been increasing, whereas dropout rates were decreasing (Children Reading Better than Those in 50's, Study Finds). Tevis’ claims could merely be of personal opinion, as the study Reading Achievement in the United States: Then and Now conducted by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1975, stated that “anyone who says that he knows that literacy is decreasing is a very unsure