In the book To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee, She used real life examples for a building point of her book. People can relate this book to Jim Crow laws, mob mentality, and the Scottsboro Trials.
Jim Crow is the first connection seen in Harper Lee’s book. Jim Crow is a set of laws set for the black community to keep the white and black people separated from each other. People believed his law was needed to protect the white women from being raped and beaten by black men. people also wanted to keep black people …show more content…
Mob mentality is how people will follow suit with what everyone else is doing regardless of it being right or wrong. People will follow mob mentality because it is natural instinct, people will see other people doing something then they believe it is worthwhile. They also believe that since they are in large numbers the punishment for their actions will be minimal and different than if they acted alone. They might not know what they are doing but what seems to be the urgency of the situation masks over that and they act without thought. There are examples of mob mentality in To Kill a Mockingbird. One moment mob mentality in present in the book is when a group of people showed up at the jail to kill Tom Robinson because he “raped” Mayella. Mobs feel all powerful when they are in a group but if someone singles them out they will not feel like a group anymore they will feel like single stand alone people again. This is exactly what Scout unintentionally does during this scene in the book. She talks directly to Walter Cunningham singling him out from the rest and making it awkward for him and this causes him not to be part of the mob anymore. The people in the mob were thinking more and ended up dispersing the mob. Mob mentality is commonly related to racism in older times such as when the book take …show more content…
These inspirations came from the old jim crow laws set for blacks during the 1930’s. Mob mentality and the extreme lengths people will go just because they are in a group. Biggest of all racism, racism was a recurring theme in the book showing just how low we put black people before we came to modern times. To Kill a Mockingbird was truly a moving book showing just how dark our past was and shows us how far we have come as a