The Divided World of
To Kill A Mockingbird
An introduction to the setting and social issues
confronted in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird is . . .
A picture of American society seen through
the eyes of Scout Finch, an eight-year-old girl
in Maycomb, Alabama.
Scout’s world is divided, segmented, and
separated by:
social class, race, gender, and age.
To Kill a Mockingbird is . . .
A
Bildungsroman
 Meaning: A novel of growing up & maturing
 German: Bildung=maturing; Roman=novel
 In a Bildungsroman, the central character
grows from a state of innocence and naïveté
to one of experience and enlightenment.
 It is a coming-of-age novel, about the
journey of becoming an adult.
The Author: Harper Lee
 She
wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, her first and
only novel, in 1960 while working in the
reservations department of an overseas
airline.
 She based the novel on her experiences
growing up in Monroeville, Alabama.
 Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 1961.
The Setting
Two things define the world of the novel:
 The
American South
 The Great Depression of the 1930s
A Different World: Prejudice
 Even
though we can identify with Scout’s
character and experiences, her world is
dramatically different from ours.
 Today, we discourage prejudice—in Scout’s
world, it was assumed, acknowledged, and
encouraged. There were even laws that
enforced prejudice!
Jim Crow Laws

The Jim Crow Laws were a racial caste system (a system that
separates people into levels of society) that operated primarily
but not exclusively in southern and border states from 1877
through the 1960s.

Many states could impose legal punishments on people for
consorting (having social contact) with members of
another race.
Laws forbade interracial marriage.
Laws ordered business owners and public institutions to
keep black and white clients separated.


Examples of Jim Crow Laws
African Americans were not allowed to vote.
 All interaction between races was restricted.

• Water fountains
• Door entrances & exits
• Separate hospitals, churches, prisons and public
schools
• Separate public restrooms
• In all instances these separate accommodations
were inferior to those given to Caucasians. In some
cases, there were no facilities offered at all.
The Use of the “N” Word
It should be no surprise that novel set in the racist
atmosphere of 1930s Alabama contains repeated use
of the “N” word.
 It is right to feel uncomfortable with this word.
 The use of this word does NOT mean that Harper
Lee was racist. In a novel about tense racial and social
issues in the 1930s south it is Lee’s responsibility to
correctly reflect the beliefs and language of the people
she is writing about.

A Different World: Social Life
In Scout’s hometown, there are specific social expectations.
 Children must be very polite to all white adults. Any adult has the
right to scold and/or punish any disrespectful child.
 People must be friendly and hospitable. On Sundays, neighbors
visit each other; it’s rude to have your doors closed, as that looks
like you don’t want to socialize.
 Everyone goes to church.
 Men work to support their families; women stay at home, care for
their families, & visit friends.
 Anyone who doesn’t do these things is viewed with suspicion.
Social Class Hierarchy in
Maycomb, Alabama
“Somewhere I had received
the impression that Fine
Folks were people who did
the best they could with the
sense they had, but Aunt
Alexandria was of the
opinion . . .that the longer a
family had been squatting
on one patch of land the
finer it was” (130).
Families with hereditary
links to the original settlers of
Maycomb County
Farmers &
Professionals
Ewells’ level of society
“The Disgrace of Maycomb”
Minorities
(Jim Crow Laws & Racist society)
A Comfortable World
Even though Scout’s world may sound stifling and cruel,
there are many good things about it, too:
 Neighbors help one another through tough times.
 The community is close-knit; everybody knows everybody
else’s business, but they also care about each other.
 There are people who don’t share their community’s
prejudices and who fight against them.
A “Outside” World:
The Great Depression
A depression is a period of drastic decline in an
economy, with less business activity, falling prices (so
people don’t make as much money) and high levels of
unemployment.
 The Great Depression in America began with a stock
market crash in 1929 and didn’t end until 1941.
 Millions of people who once had enough money were
now poor. People who had been poor became only
poorer.

Life in the Depression
Because of the Depression, some children in
Scout’s class at school have no food to bring for
lunch and no money to buy one.
 Many children can’t pass the first grade because
every year they have to leave school to help their
families with the farming.
 Some of her father’s law clients can’t pay him in
money; instead, they give him things from their
farms—such as firewood.

A poor farmer’s
wife and child.
A poor man’s transportation
Movie theater
in an
Alabama
town.
A highway
signboard:
“Less TaxesMore Jobs”
A typical downtown area.
A street like the one
Scout lives on.
Maycomb, Alabama
This is the world we enter in To Kill a
Mockingbird—the world of the Finch
family: eight-year old Scout, her
twelve-year-old brother Jem, their
black cook Calpurnia, and their
father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the
town.