To Kill A Mockingbird Essay

“The witness of the state… have presented themselves to you… in cynical confidence that their testimonies won’t be doubted [because of]... the evil assumption - that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings.” (Lee 273). This was a line quoted from Atticus during Tom Robinson's court case in To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird took place in the early 1930’s in Maycomb County, Alabama, when many people were strongly prejudiced against blacks. Atticus said this line not only to save Tom Robinson, a black man, from the wrongful verdict of rape, but potentially even some of his town from the stifling grip of prejudice. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee demonstrated that prejudice causes lack of empathy and bias; this was shown through the words and reactions to conflicts of prejudiced characters.
Firstly, prejudice causes bias. This was displayed when only one jury member had realized the unreliability of the Ewells’ testimonies. Atticus had pointed out “that there was one fellow who took
Gilmer’s words to Tom during the court case exhibit lack of empathy. Many, such as Mr. Dolphus Raymond (a character in To Kill A Mockingbird,), argued that Mr. Gilmer was simply doing his job as a lawyer. However, the wordings of his cross examinations say otherwise. One example of this is when Mr. Gilmer calls Tom Robinson boy: ““Are you being impudent to me, boy?” “No suh, I didn’t go to be.”” (Lee 265). Calling Tom Robinson a ‘boy,’ though simply swapping pronouns, shows Mr. Gilmer thinks that Tom is inferior to him. Although the pronoun ‘boy’ was a normal for use on black people in this time period, Mr. Gilmer only used ‘boy’ because it shows little respect. Through this, it is seen that Mr. Gilmer’s word choice was very belittling towards Tom Robinson. As a lawyer, he made a conscious decision to utilize the prejudice in the jury. Mr. Gilmer’s biased approach working displays extreme lack of empathy for the