Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story set in the Depression-era Deep South.
Like many stories set in that time period, race relations and racial injustice are important themes. The story's six-year-old narrator, Scout Finch, gradually begins to understand the complicated nature of these themes as the story progresses.
The primary event in Scout's education is the trial and death of the black defendant, Tom Robinson. Scout's father, the lawyer Atticus Finch,...
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story set in the Depression-era Deep South.
Like many stories set in that time period, race relations and racial injustice are important themes. The story's six-year-old narrator, Scout Finch, gradually begins to understand the complicated nature of these themes as the story progresses.
The primary event in Scout's education is the trial and death of the black defendant, Tom Robinson. Scout's father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, is given the unenviable (and dangerous) duty of defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. At first, Scout doesn't understand why Atticus would do such a thing. When she hears from Cecil Jacobs on the school playground that her daddy “defended niggers,” she is tempted to break the promise she made to her father not to fight anymore.
At home, she questions her father, using the language of the playground:
Do you defend niggers, Atticus?
After Atticus admonishes her for using the term, which he simply refers to as “common,” he explains why he is defending a black man despite the bitter anger it causes among some of the townspeople:
. . . if I didn't, I couldn't hold my head up in town. I couldn't represent this county in the legislature. I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something.
Atticus is doing the unpopular work of defending a black man because of his personal convictions. If that wasn't bad enough in the eyes of the Maycomb county residents, who happen to be racist, he also actually attempts to win the case.
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