To Kill a Mockingbird #2

The struggle for many people in the Jim Crow era was discrimination. If you were Caucasian, you faced the decision to support the African-American community or to jump on the bandwagon and treat the African-American community as a disease. On the flip-side, if you were African-American or of a different race, you either had to accept being treated like a disease or you could stand up for yourself. This is the story of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Atticus was a thorough man; he knew what he wanted and he didn't let anybody stand in his way. Atticus portrays a belief of equality on pages 182 and 183 by standing up for Calpurnia, his African-American nurse by saying "[...] I don't think that the children have suffered one bit from her having brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in some ways than a mother would have been... she's never let them get away with anything, she's never indulged them the way most color nurses do. She tried to bring them up according to her lights, and Cal's lights are pretty good-and another thing, the children love her."

Anybody who believes in equality, believes in social change. The Jim Crow time period, revolved around people who wanted changes in racism and the people who wanted others rights to remain the same. Discrimination had reached a new level. People were not only shunned singularly but they were shunned by associating with the "wrong" people. Scout, who is a school-age child, was discriminated against as well. In a conversation with Atticus on page 139 she says"[...] Most colored folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong." Scout faced many unexpected comments from different parts of the book when news got out that her father was supporting a African-American man in a legal case.

The social pyramid in this time went as so: the lowest level being the people of color, then the lowest Caucasian class, then the middle class, and finally the richest Caucasians made up the first class. Atticus, by supporting the African-American man in the court case, supported social change. This means that his views on the decades leading up to the current, were different than what the average person chose to believe. Your perspective on things develops overtime which greatly affects how you choose to believe or how you act.

This is similar to what is happening currently in our court systems; we are deciding whether we stick with the past or we move on to the future in marriage rights. Of course, this is not as large as the discrimination of different people in the Jim Crow era but there are two definite groups that are trying to make marriage the way that they want it to be. This is an example of social change; the group of people supporting same-sex marriage is trying to be able to own the right to marry and to have their opinions voiced.

To me, To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about voicing your opinion and standing behind what you think is right and in the grand scheme of things, that is what life is about. Life is about defining yourself because you want to be able to choose who you want to be. People want to be thought of beyond their social ranking, their education, or their race. People want to be thought of as themselves. To Kill a Mockingbird in my perspective is the story of Scout following behind in Atticus's footsteps by watching him stand up for what he believes is right and by learning how to choose what she wants in life so that she can achieve it.

To Kill a Mockingbird #1

Each day you are forced to make difficult decisions. You are forced to decide if you are going to stand up, or blend in. As children, you believe very much of what your parents also believe in. When somebody says something that goes against what you were raised to believe, your instincts set in. It is in that moment that you say something that you are going to regret. Maybe you don't regret it, and maybe it is then, that you make somebody think like they never thought before.

Jean is a young girl growing up in the 1930's in a small town in Alabama. She is not your average girl though; she has grown up with more relationships with other guys. Jean is not afraid to have a voice, or use vulgar language at that. She owns a gun, and is not afraid to adventure. But, her words and her thoughts occasionally get her into trouble.

On page 110 of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean's cousin Francis began an argument on Christmas by saying "If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that's his own business, like Grandma says, so it ain't your fault. I guess it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover besides, but I'm here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family". Of course, like most people, Jean did not respond very ladylike. The first thing that she said was "Francis, what the hell do you mean?"(Page 110)

Later that evening while Jean's uncle Jack was cleaning her injured knuckles, she asked him what a whore-lady was. Jack responded without telling her what it really had meant and by covering it up with a story. These few comments, changed how her uncle Jack perceived children and his thoughts on marriage. Jean overheard a conversation that Uncle Jack was having with her father Atticus. It is then that Jack says that " Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon. She said I didn't understand children much and told me why. She told me how I should've treated her-Oh dear, I'm so sorry I romped on her."(Page 115)

Jack reflected on the things that he had done. He recognized how in over his head he was when it came to dealing with children. It is incredible how the one small argument had affected so many people that Jean had been around. She stood up for what she believed in and made a major impact on many peoples lives because of it. I believe that the moral of this section in the story is that you can choose to stand out and impact other people or you can observe and not leave a footprint or change how other people believe.