The Prejudice of Race, Gender and Social Class in The Novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” Essay Sample

Although Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird presents several examples of the ways in which people are prejudiced against each other in 1930s Alabama, the book’s most significant contribution to the discussion of prejudice may be its exploration of the ways in which people are prejudiced against themselves. The novel’s three central characters–Atticus Finch, his daughter Scout, and her brother Jem–all wrestle with their own prejudices as they come of age in a society that is deeply segregated along racial lines. Atticus, a white lawyer who defends a black man accused of a crime he did not commit, must confront the ways in which he is prejudiced against black people, and Scout and Jem must confront the ways in which