To Kill A Mockingbird Relevant Today

Some novels only apply to a certain time or problem in history that could be fixed easily, while other books such as To Kill A Mockingbird that decide to battle the war on racism are timeless. A timeless novel that can teach any generation a lesson, no matter what time in history, is hard to achieve. As time has gone by since the Civil Rights Movement, more and more people are asking the question, “Is racism still a concern?” The short answer is yes, as long as there is one racist human on Earth, this novel will still be relevant.

The novel To Kill A Mockingbird is interesting because you see Tom Robinson (a black man accused of rape) face a battle that you know he will lose. He is facing a legal system that has no desire to make the
A very controversial character in this novel is Atticus, which is seen as a main character that is not racist, but some people beg to differ and say that he is racist. While many people agree that this book is very inspiring and influential towards seeing what african-americans had to go through in the 30’s, others do not. They claim that the language in the book has extremely negative notations towards african-americans and is too outdated to teach our students a lesson. While some people claim that America is over racism, travel far enough south and you will begin to think otherwise. Robin Bates (the author of Harper Lee’s Book Became Less Honest) points out that when she went back to her hometown in Tennessee, she heard the n-word plenty of times. “While things are obviously much better today, I still see Confederate flags on an almost daily basis when I return there—not in Sewanee itself, which is a college town and perched on top of a mountain, but down in the valley.” (Bates) The other main topic on why To Kill A Mockingbird is irrelevant is because of the language. By language i mean that this novel uses derogatory words such as the n-word, but it also uses common slang from the 1930’s. But you can’t expect the english language to stay exactly the same for 80 years, and while the n-word was used more often in the 30’s-60’s, people still use it today. “Notice they are “ladies”, not women; look at the hiss and stick of the sibilance, and all those letter “g”s in the muddy second sentence.” (Too Simple A Moral Tale) The word choice in To Kill A Mockingbird can either be looked at as offensive to people today, or looked at as what the past used to look like. There was slavery and wars in the past, but that doesn’t keep it out of our history books, so why should the language in this novel? Also this book can’t be outdated, it teaches more lessons