Social Inequality: to Kill a Mockingbird

Alexis Shuey

Mrs.Grunthaner

PD. 4 Pre-AP English

5/19/13

The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Lee viewed herself as the little girl known as Scout. Scout’s life was very different from how a young girl’s life would be today. To Kill a Mockingbird demonstrates people’s behaviors and society during Harper Lee’s childhood in many ways.

Jem and Scout were walking home from a Halloween party that took place at their schoolhouse. In the pitch black of the night, Cecil scared the two while they were walking in front of the Radley’s house. As Cecil reached his house, and Jem and Scout continued toward their own, something attacked them. It was a person, who had aimed to kill. After hearing the screams, Boo Radley ran out of the house with the only defense he could find, a kitchen knife, and stabbed the person who had been trying to harm the two kids. After reaching home, Jem hurt, and Scout scared to death, they had gotten the news that Bob Ewell had been the one trying to attack them, and he was found dead, with a knife in his chest.

This scene relates to the theme manners and polite society because it shows that the society is not very safe all the time as most people think. It can actually be very dangerous. Heck Tate stated that Bob Ewell had fallen on his knife and killed himself to stay as far away from drama as possible, when Atticus thought that Jem had killed him. Deep down, Jem and Scout each knew that neither of them had done anything to Bob Ewell. But Boo, who had decided to come out of his house to discuss the death, definitely had something to do with it.

Bob Ewell was ready to attack the two kids just to eliminate his problems. He knew that if the kids were gone, Atticus would be too and then he could live his life with no threats to him and to his family. Bob Ewell is the definition of white trash. He can do anything he wants, because he knows that absolutely nobody will care. He ‘traps out of season’ because everyone knows that if he doesn’t, he and his family will starve to death. Of course nobody thinks it’s fair, but they can’t do anything about it because they know that nothing will be done. Bob and his family are very revolting people. They live in the ghetto, surrounded by black families in which they don’t fit in. And they are white trash, which means they don’t fit in with the whites either. At the court trial between Robinson and Ewell, the Ewell’s lied indefinitely. Mayella lied about Tom forcing himself onto her in spite of keeping her sexually abusive father safe.

To Kill a Mockingbird involves a lot of manners and polite society, even though it’s not all really polite. Although the town of Maycomb has a lot of very different people, some of them would just always be the same in many ways. A lot of people from Harper Lee’s childhood relate quite a bit to how people behave nowadays. Even racism still goes around, although it supposedly ended 60 years ago. Walking around in town today may not be as bad as you think, but things can happen very unexpectedly. You just have to be careful about who’s out to get you.