Mans Inhumanity to Man

Why does man treat others so harshly and with such cruelty? Since the beginning of time man has shown inhumanity to his fellow man. This was shown especially throughout the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s to get rid of segregation. Man’s inhumanity to man was even shown as early as the beginning of the 20th century. In some parts of the world today you can still see remnants of racism and other acts of cruelty that man does to his fellow man. The novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and two poems by Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed and Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave, shows man’s inhumanity to man with the use of characterization, justification and black humor.
Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird was written in 1960. It went on to Pulitzer Prize along with many other literary awards, which was a very big achievement for Harper Lee considering To Kill A Mockingbird was her one and only ever published novel (“Harper”) The 1960s were a time of segregation, racism and civil rights movements. Even though the whole book deals with racism in general the Scottsboro Trials that took place in 1931 had a big influence on Lee’s Tom Robinson trial. The Scottsboro Trials were a series of trials were nine African American teenage boys were charged with the raping two white women. The trials lasted six years and in the end, five out of the nine boys were convicted. These trials had a big impact on America, intensifying the debate on racism and racial prejudice. Harper Lee was inspired by these trials and other acts of racial prejudice to incorporate acts of racism into To Kill A Mockingbird, which was very fitting since the book took place in the small town of Maycomb during the Great Depression (“LitCharts”).
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee can be used to show Man’s Inhumanity to Man using the characterization of Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson is a 25 year old African American man with a wife and kids who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell (“To Kill”).