To Kill A Mockingbird Rhetorical Analysis

In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee is able to successfully develop the characters and portray her purpose for writing the novel. Numerous authors use their characters to achieve the goal of establishing a theme and purpose within their material. They are able to do this by using literary devices to convey what they want the readers to know. This technique is commonly used by authors to relay information and this book features the use of the main character’s perspective, irony, and metaphors. Harper Lee utilized rhetorical devices that manifested the purpose of the novel which focuses on the treatment of people, discrimination during that time era, along with prevalent gender roles forced upon characters throughout the book.
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“I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away” expresses Scout’s distaste for dresses. The metaphor of a dress to a penitentiary helps the reader understand the oppression Scout felt while wearing one. These experiences helped give a negative connotation to being a girl in Scout’s mind. “It’s time you started bein’ a girl and acting right! I burst into tears and fled to Calpurnia”, was a statement Jem made to Scout, which completely contradicts his earlier statements. This hurts Scout emotionally because she always wanted Jem’s approval and was always being told how she should conform to the traditional expectations of women at the time. Scout’s stereotype of being a tomboy and the constant critique that her character endured reflected the apparent sexism that women in the 1930s were subjected to in Maycomb. All of the characters in this book played a pivotal role in developing the themes of the book: justice, racism, prejudice, and sexism. The use of rhetorical devices allows for the author’s ideas to surface and enable the readers to encapsulate the concept of the text. Harper Lee used