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 1930s
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 growing up.
The Author: Harper Lee
• Wrote To Kill a
Mockingbird (1st &
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
2 things define the novel’s setting:
The American South
(Maycomb, Alabama)
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
• Scout’s world: it was
assumed, acknowledged,
and encouraged
• There were even laws
that enforced prejudice!
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
• Jim Crow Laws: a racial
caste system (a system
that separates people into
levels of society) that
operated primarily (not
exclusively) in southern
states from 1877 through
the 1960s.
• States could impose legal
punishments on people
for 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.
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
• African Americans were
not allowed to vote.
• All interaction between
races was restricted.
• Water fountains
• Door entrances & exits
• Hospitals, churches, prisons
and public schools
• Public restrooms
• Separate accommodations
were inferior to those given
to whites.
• Often, there were no
facilities offered at all.
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
• A Black male could
not offer his hand
(to shake hands)
with a White male
because it implied
being socially equal.
• A Black male could
not offer his hand to
a White woman,
because he risked
being accused of
rape.
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
• Blacks and Whites
were not
supposed to eat
together.
• If they did, Whites
were to be served
first, and some
sort of partition
was to be placed
between
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
• Lynch mobs
directed their
hatred against one
(sometimes
several) victims.
• The victim was an
example of what
happened to a
Black man who
tried to vote, or
who looked at a
White woman, or
who tried to get a
White man's job.
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.
*NOTE: You will
NOT use the Nword in class
unless you are
reading directly
from the book
or writing a
quotation from
the book
A Different World: Social Expectations
1930s Alabama had 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 didn’t do these: viewed
with suspicion.
Social 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
related to the
original
settlers of
Maycomb
County
Farmers &
Professionals
Ewells’ level of society
“The Disgrace of
Maycomb” “trash”
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.
The Great Depression
• A depression: a period of
drastic economic decline
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 who once had
enough money were now
poor.
• Poor people became
poorer.
The Great Depression
• Because of the
Depression, some
children in Scout’s class
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.
The Great Depression
A poor farmer’s
wife and child.
A poor man’s
transportation
Movie
theater
in an
Alabama
town.
A highway
signboard:
“Less TaxesMore Jobs”
The Setting
A typical downtown area
A street like the
one Scout lives on
Maycomb, Alabama—1930s
This is the world
we enter in To Kill
a Mockingbird—
the world of the
Finch family:
• 8 year-old Scout
• Scout’s 12 yearold brother, Jem
Maycomb, Alabama—1930s
• Atticus
Finch, their
father and a
lawyer in
the town
• Calpurnia,
their African
American
cook/nanny
Theme Topics to SUBSEARCH for
Social Inequality
Race
Justice
Morality & Ethics
The Coexistence
of Good & Evil
• Courage
•
•
•
•
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• Why is it important to “climb in
someone’s skin and walk around in
it” in order to truly understand a
person?
• How does labeling and stereotyping
influence how we look at and
understand the world?
• What is the relationship between
intolerance and injustice?
• In what ways does appearance now
always reflect reality?
• What allows some individuals to take
a stand against prejudice/oppression
while others choose to participate in
it?
• What are the benefits and
consequences of
questioning/challenging social
order?