Examples Of Stereotypes In To Kill A Mockingbird

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. The characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are depicted by the author, Harper Lee, as classifying each other based on certain attributes. They all have stereotypes about how individuals will behave based on age, gender, race, social status, and other categories. The book follows the struggle of racism, sexism, and agism seen through the eyes of a little girl who goes by the name Scout. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee argues that stereotyping can influence one’s sense of judgement. One event that shows how stereotyping can influence one’s sense of judgement is when Tom Robinson, a black man, is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Due to the high amount of racism , Tom is wrongly convicted. In the novel it states, “In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.” (Lee 220). The jury and the townspeople were highly biased towards the case, regardless of all the evidence proving his innocence. This shows that stereotypes can influence a person's …show more content…
It is clearly shown in the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, that assuming a generalization based on unreliable sources often leads to wrongly judgement. When judging someone, people tend to jump to conclusions based on certain attributes that apply to that person. Because people tend to assume how someone will act based on characteristics of the person, they never give them a chance to show their true colors. In order to stop stereotypes, we all have to recognize really how much stereotypes impact someone's life. In other words, stereotypes serve to unfairly and sometimes unintentionally keep qualified, capable people out of jobs or positions of power. We can all learn how to not make conclusions based on someone's appearance or background

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Examples Of Stereotypes In To Kill A Mockingbird