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A Study of the Different Types of Prejudice Depicted in 'to Kill a Moc

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A Study of the Different Types of Prejudice Depicted in 'to Kill a Moc
A Study of the Different Kinds of Prejudice in, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird'

Prejudice is the preconceived opinion of a person or thing. There are three main types of prejudice: racial prejudice, social prejudice and religious prejudice. These three are the types of prejudice most dominant in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird'. The setting for the novel is a fictitious town called Maycomb. This town is situated in Alabama, south USA. The racial prejudice shown in the novel has a lot to do with the town being situated in the southern United States. This is because there was a lot of racism in the southern United States in the 1930's. This racism mainly originated from the civil war, which lasted from 1875 to 1883. The northern, more progressive states declared slavery illegal, but slavery was a vital part of the southern economy as the labour was cheap for the cotton plantation owners. Although the northern states made it illegal to have slaves the south still kept slaves illegally. This was the main cause of the civil war. The northern states won the war and the United States was formed. Even though they lost the war, the south passed their own ‘Jim Crow Laws' in the 1900's making racial segregation legal. The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the community fuelled racism in Maycomb. These negative qualities account for the social and religious prejudices in the novel. The community's narrow-mindedness is formed because the population has been unchanged for many decades with the same families occupying the town. This causes prejudice towards anything that is different from the norm. Maycomb is very backward and isolated due to the town being far from the river, which was the main form of transport in the early days. This confines the town's development and leads to the social conditioning of the people this in turn helps to explain why there is social and religious prejudice. Maycomb people have very inward looking views and so these views are

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