Color Problem in Happer Lee’s “To Kill a Mocking Bird”

Race issue and great adventures take a large part in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. A social problem of deeper significance is presented in the story. The color problem appears with all its bad aspects. To kill a mocking Bird reveals of how a people in a community contaminated with the disease of color prejudice and it appears as a prominent theme. Yet the story conducts the meaning of how social and color problem raise as race issue.

The story is quite simple but then tightens up into a deep meaning. The story is narrated in the first scene by Scout, who is barely six years old. Numerous incidents happen in the story and one of the incidents is when Jem’s arm is broken. Jem is Scout’s elder brother. The story also comes up with the mysterious figure Mr Radley who seldom speaks to others. It makes the children curious about the story of his life. It is Miss Stephanie, a gossip of the neighbourhood, who has told the children of the mysterious ways of Boo Radley’s life and they finally begin their adventure around Mr Radley’s house. The incidents link together the social problem of color prejudice. It seemed by the narration from Scout of the Boo Radley mystery and the breaking of Jem’s arm.

Yet the story grows to the deeper social and race issue. Scout the narrative reveals the bad aspects of racial prejudice that grows in the societies of Alabama and other states in the Deep South know as Maycomb. In the story, Maycomb has a mixed population of whites and blacks, the whites as a landowners and farmers employing the Blacks as farm hands and domestic servants. There is discrimination against the Blacks as this is an accepted fact in the Deep side. “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men everyday of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.” (Page 233). The discrimination is seen through the point of view of the narrator. Here, the farmers in the countryside are being illiterate and prejudiced. All these treatments against the Blacks are the phenomena happens in the story that reveals the racism issue in the story.

To Kill a Mocking Bird is an example of how the social problem can be major issue through the eye of the innocence, Scout who links together the incidents revealing the social problem and color prejudice. The story much like a mockingbird that makes music to us to enjoy and in a deep meaning carries out the race issue.

Fauziah Umar Abdat

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