Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra’s beliefs are a major cause of conflict throughout To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This conflict is not only between Calpurnia, Atticus Finch's’ housekeeper, and Alexandra, Atticus Finch’s sister and the aunt of his children. Furthermore, their moral differences create conflict between themselves and other characters involved in the plot. However, these two important characters aren’t only different. Calpurnia and Alexandra have many similarities, as well. Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra have similarities and differences in their moral beliefs, their role in the Finch house, and their character traits.…
“‘Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.’ ‘I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right somehow it ain’t right to do ‘em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that-it just makes me sick,’”(Lee, 266). In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee lays out the story of the Finch family consisting of two siblings, Jem and Scout, along with their widowed father Atticus. This family is faced with a tough break when Atticus get appointed a case to defend an African American (Tom Robinson) in the time of extreme discrimination. Growing up shapes and builds minds to what will fully become of them in future years even though there may be obstacles to endeavor through the process.…
Chapter 1 In this chapter the Finch family is introduced by Scout. Simon Finch established a homestead, ‘Finch’s Landing’, on the banks of the Alabama River. Both of his sons ended up leaving the landing as, Atticus, studied law; the other had studied medicine. Their sister Alexandra stayed and took care of the landing with her husband.…
Ideal families are usually formed by values, morals, and love between each others. However, in some cases, different families may form badly through separation. The Finches, the Cunninghams, and the Ewells were examples of families that were used by Harper Lee, the author of the story To Kill a Mockingbird, to demonstrate the values and costumes of families in Maycomb, Alabama. ,To determine whether if a family is an ideal family or not, one must investigate what an ideal family, the Finches, is like. A good example of a quote that was shown in To Kill a Mockingbird, was on page 24 and 25, "Hush your mouth! Don 't matter who they are, anybody… you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!" This quote was said by Calpurnia, a black cook of the Finches, when she was punishing Scout for being rude to little Walter Cunningham. This shows that even though the Finch family is missing one member of its family, the mom, Calpurnia is capable of replacing that gap. Another example of a quote that proves that the Finches are an ideal family was on page 127, "Jem 's growing up now and you are…
I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In chapters 10 through 15 the trial becomes one of the main topics and causes many conflicts. Aunt Alexandra comes to stay with the Finch family, which leads to some quarrelling. In this journal I will be characterizing Atticus and questioning whether Calpurnia or Alexandra is an excellent mother to the children.…
She stands for everything a traditional Southern woman is supposed to, She wears dresses, and she hosts tea parties, and gossips. She stands by the thought that only old, white families are of value, and that every family had a “streak”. Whether it is a drinking “streak” or an incest “streak”, Aunt Alexandra has something against everybody. She gossips and tries to make believe she is perfect. She despises Scout’s overalls and she tries so hard to force Scout to be the perfect Southern lady that Scout has no desire to become. Mrs. Dubose is another “perfect Southern woman.” She has problems, particularly an addiction to morphine, but she sweeps them all under the rug because in a town like Maycomb, Alabama, filled with these “perfect Southern women”, you can’t show imperfection, because once you do, you’re thrown to the…
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee there is a recurring them involving racism and incest in the town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. Mayella Ewell is a nineteen year old girl living at home with her abusive drunk father, and 8 younger brothers and sisters. Her mother died thus leaving her to be the mother figure in the poor household. Mayella accuses twenty-five year old black man Tom Robinson of raping her. Mayella had multiple motives for falsely accusing Tom Robinson of her rape. Mayella accused Tom because she was forced to by her father, Bob Ewell and because that man is her father.…
In Haper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" the characters face adversity that develop the controversial, effective themes. Lee uses both racism and discrimination themes are represented in this novel, especially through the character Atticus's actions and words. Accordingly, Atticus believes that racism is wrong and despite what everyone else thinks, strives to see both races equally. For example, Aunt Alexandra moves in with the Finches because she strongly believes that Jem and Scout need a feminine mentor in their life but excludes Calpurnia, who is of the opposite race. She even attempts to change everything about how Atticus fathers his children and how he treats Calpurnia; including how he speaks to her at home.…
The groups of people in Maycomb rarely allow different people to interact with each other. Sometimes, people get excluded because of the colour of their skin, or by the amount of money they carry in their pockets. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Helen Robinson, the wife of the convicted black man, can’t find a job after her husband gets accused of rape. She needed to support her family by getting a job, but nobody wanted to employ her because of what her husband was rumored to have done. Prejudice against Tom Robinson lead to his wife and kids not being able to get what they needed. Another example of exclusion in To Kill a Mockingbird is when Aunt Alexandra wouldn’t let Scout play with Walter Cunningham because he was poor. She says that his family is different from the Finches, and that he wasn’t as good as them. She also places certain families of Maycomb into groups that exclude the rest of the town from their activities. An example of this is when she ways that all Penfield women are flighty, after a Penfield girl giggled during church. According to her, all Maycomb families have a streak of their own, and that places them into their own groups. This lead s to exclusion from various other groups, because people don’t think you belong with them, and not being able to get what you want. If a person can’t feed their kids or support themselves, they can’t lead a good…
To Kill a Mockingbird is a book about Scout Finch who lives with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, in the sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb. Maycomb is suffering through the Great Depression, but Atticus is a prominent lawyer and the Finch family is reasonably well off in comparison to the rest of society.There are multiple themes in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee. However, one of the most important is courage. This theme is shown almost by all of the characters in the novel but mainly by Jem, Scout and Atticus. Courage is shown in the novel in different ways by the three of them.…
In the novel, Scout’s aunt, Alexandra, comes to visit them for a while. She decided that Scout needed some feminine influence (Lee 127). Aunt Alexandra acted like a perfect Southern woman and was very comely. She wore corsets, powdered her face, and had tea parties. At these tea parties, she would gossip with the women of the town (Lee 128, 228). During this time in real life, the ladies who were considered proper wore dresses and skirts. They also need to behave with high moral standards to be considered proper. It was more important than what they looked like (Cruz). The actions of Aunt Alexandra being a proper woman in the South implies that Lee was influenced by real events and behaviors to write her novel. In the 1930s, it was considered improper for women to wear men's clothing, to curse, and to play sports. For a woman to do any of these things would be considered very inappropriate (Cruz). In the book, Scout wears overalls, unless she is going to school. She wears a dress then, but she does not like it very much. She also plays outside with her brother, Jem, and their friend, Dill (Lee 15). Scout gets into fights at school and once she beat up Dill because he made her mad (Lee 22, 41). Aunt Alexandra is very opinionated and tries to get Scout to act more like a proper Southern lady. She complains…
I, Pearl, was born an outcast of this prejudice world. Today marks my twentieth birthday. My mother, Hester, my father, Dimmesdale, and the town’s people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony know I am the living Scarlet Letter. Since the day I was born my mother has had to wear that dreadful symbol. The Scarlet Letter represented my mother as an adulterer.…
“The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don't have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it.” by Chris Pine. This quote deeply portrays the idea of how different people in the same type of conditions can act very differently depending on their perspective towards the issue. Over time, we all develop a sense of perspective and opinion towards people and things, however, these perspectives are prone to change as we grow up to be more mature and thoughtful. In the novel, To kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the Finch’s family develops the idea that despite your rank in the social hierarchy, personal values and beliefs are determined by one’s personality. This idea was further developed…
In the past years women have been fighting for equal rights, but in the year 1933 it was pushed on to young girls to be a “proper lady” meaning to serve the husband and have a woman’s first interest in the well being of men. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is about childhood and growing up with Scout. The narrator, Scout has been taught like an adult by her father for her whole life and gender was never a problem with Atticus, he taught her and her brother Jem the same way, but as she grows up she is pressured to become a proper lady by her peers. We can gather that gender roles are a major part in Scout’s life by the several symbols of women, such as flowers, that show, the theme of gender roles that Harper Lee weaves into To Kill a Mockingbird.…
In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, numerous symbols and themes are present throughout the novel. Through the good and evil in a town such as Maycomb, nobility and courageous were not the easiest attributes to fulfill; however, for Atticus, Jem and Scout, these traits came quite easily with time. As Ambrose Redmoon had said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.” That quote directly relates to To Kill a Mockingbird and the Finch family in that the fear of standing up against Maycomb’s abundant racism and unfortunate prejudice is nothing compared to the rewarding courage one feels when standing up to it.…