Racism in To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, the prejudice of society causes people with differences to become victims of the town’s bigotry. Not only differences in skin color, but also differences in social status. As a man who always believes in doing the right thing no matter what, Atticus Finch teaches his children, Jem and Scout, the difference in right and wrong. One of the main characters in the novel that is …

…she has written another novel about race prejudice, but rather that she has a placed race prejudice in a perspective which allows us to see it as an aspect of a larger thing; as something that arises from phantom contacts, from fear and lack of knowledge; and finally as something that disappears with the kind of knowledge or ‘education’ that one gains through learning what people are like when you “finally see them.” (Matuz, 1990, p.240)