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Essay / Alienation in Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Harper Lee creates characters that contribute to the novels' appeal to audiences of all ages. In To Kill a Mockingbird, we learn lessons about life from both children and adults. There are three characters who are looked down upon by the society around them, one because of their race and two because of their morality. Society ignored these people simply because it was afraid that they might be like them and like the unknown. Lee uses violence and alienation to depict the things that are wrong within the small society. Alienation, a commonly felt feeling, arises from society's intolerance of individual differences in race, gender, class, circumstance, or ideology. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the alienation of certain characters to depict the assumptions and moral values of society. This is accomplished through the alienation of Arthur "Boo" Radley, Tom Robinson, and Atticus Finch, all of whom play key roles in this novel. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayMr. Dolphus Raymond, a man who pretended to be the town drunk so he could be with the woman he loved. Mr. Raymond is a white man who fell in love with a black woman. Tom, a black man, is found guilty because Bob Ewell, a white man, accuses him of raping his daughter; and in 1930s Maycomb, a white man's word still takes precedence over a black man's, in Maycomb County with a bottle of Coke in a paper bag and drinks it every day. “When I come to town, which is rare, if I weave a little and drink from this bag, people can say that Dolphus Raymond is in the clutches of whiskey, that's why he won't change his ways. He can't help it, that's why he lives the way he does. » He came from a wealthy white family who probably had slaves in the past and knew that if he didn't act like a drunk, society would shun him. for being with an African-American woman and having interracial children with her. However, he believed that if he behaved like a town drunk, no one would avoid him because they wouldn't know any better. Mr. Raymond showed that it was okay to do what was different from what was considered normal. Arthur "Boo" Radley's alienation leads to countless myths and wild gossip, which are the result of society's ignorance. Scout and Jem firmly believe that in the Radley house "lived a malicious ghost...but Jem and I [Scout] had never seen it." Jem and Scout are among the many people in society who don't know much about Boo Radley, and yet they continue to assume that Boo is a malicious ghost. In general, society values gossip and myths because they find pleasure or a sense of excitement in them, even though their assumptions may be completely incorrect. Boo's alienation also dates back many years in an incident that shows how behavior is valued. When Jem and Miss Stephanie Crawford discuss Boo Radley, she claims that "Boo stuck the scissors in his parents' leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants and went back to business." This incident becomes quite controversial because according to Boo's behavior, he appears to be mentally unstable and a possible threat to society. This event illustrates that society values good behavior and that this behavior is what distinguishes an insane person from a mentally stable person. So society quickly assumes that there must still be problems to solve, which,.