Assessment 2.4

Analyse how setting was used to reinforce an idea in the written text(s).’

Note: “Idea” may refer to character or theme.

A southern town in Alabama 1930, thoughtfully chosen, is a perfect place to highlight bigotry regarding race, sex and class. Harper Lee uses this setting in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to reinforce the theme of the text; prejudice. The 1930’s in the United States was a time of friction. After the roaring twenties, the Great Depression created strain, anxiety and discord but also emptiness. “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.” The middle class became lower class, the women were again constrained to their homes and the African Americans were even more feeble for lack of job opportunities. While the people were struggling, and apparently because they were struggling, intolerance was alive and well.  We see these varying faces of bigotry in the courtroom, in the school and in the Finch’s’ household. Throughout the text, Maycomb as a backdrop ensures that each message of prejudice is heard loud and clear.

Maycomb’s court room is where we see the most blatant racism. There is no space for grey area and subtlety when making decisions in the justice system, and that is the reason the courtroom was purposefully used to reinforce the idea of prejudice. “The Court should never be influenced by the weather of the day but inevitably they will be influenced by the climate of the era,” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The centre of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is the court case concerning Tom Robinson allegedly raping Mayella Ewell. A gripping case in any era, but because this dispute is between a black man and a white woman in the southern states circa 1930, the emphasis is lifted from the horrors of rape and instead highlights racial prejudice. The climate of the setting is the reason the court case is not actually about whether Tom was guilty or not, it is about if the 1930’s jury were progressive enough to stop prosecuting innocent black people. “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.” The resentments are present everywhere in Maycomb so of course they come into the courtroom. The prejudice is felt more sharply because of the setting, ironic because as Atticus states, the one place where a man ought to have a square deal is in the courtroom. The setting of the courtroom emphasises the racism especially because in this location it is so easy to see that black and white are not equal. The black people always stand to the side to let a white person in first, the onlookers are seated in completely different places depending on their race and most importantly, the lawyers, the judge and the jury are all white. This setting shows undoubtedly Atticus and Tom really were “licked a hundred years before they started”. Even a child could recognise that the system is stacked against the black defendant. This is how the setting reinforces prejudice.

“It’s time you start being a girl”. In the 1930’s the culture pendulum swung away from more freedom for women to portraying the domestic role as the proper and fulfilling role for women. The setting of the home reinforces the theme of sexism because in this decade and several following, the home is the place where ‘women belong’ and where male and female roles are most clearly defined. For instance, Atticus comes home late in the afternoon, sits and reads, Calpernia cooks and cleans and sets the table and looks out for the children. Although Cal is paid to do this work for the family, it is not a coincidence that it is women doing the domestic chores in every single household, it is a strict societal code. Evidence of this protocol is seen when Scout states; “[Calpurnia] seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.” This clearly shows that young Scout has learned cooking means ‘being a girl’. Sexism.

Moreover, the roles of men and women in the home mirror their roles in society. Men are the leaders of the family, making the decisions, looking after finances being the breadwinner, while women must get all the chores done without complaining and must be the “sunshine in a man’s lonely life”. Outside of the home this translates to men being the leaders of the country, yet a women’s value was in their beauty and ‘softness’, their worth was based off how happy they made men. The setting of the Finch’s home reinforces the theme of sexism because it is where gender norms are as black and white as anywhere, we can obviously see the separate boxes men and women are put into. These interactions in a household could also be seen as a sort of a magnification and zoomed in section of society, evidence of the origins of sexism. The Finch’s home reinforces the theme of sexism not only because it illustrates the oppression within the home surrounding male and female roles but also shows the root of gender norms in our culture.

The layout of the town, Maycomb is to show class prejudice, and it reinforces class prejudice because it shows that this bigotry creates physical divides in communities. It is plainly seen as, Tom Robinson… “lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump. He’s a member of Calpurnia’s church”. Blacks, obviously lowest of the classes in the 1930’s, live on the outskirts of town, by the dump. The Ewells are neighbours to the negroes, although they are white, they are poor and have been “the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” meaning they are cast into a similarly low class. Just as far out of town and just as poor (thanks to the recession) are the Cunninghams. In spite of this, the family are widely known for possessing the redeeming quality of honesty. “The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay back—no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on what they have. They don’t have much, but they get along on it”. Lastly, there are the Finches right in the center. “…Jean Louise [Finch] that you are not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of several generations’ gentle breeding-“. Harper Lee uses the location of the characters’ homes to deliver, in my opinion, the key message of the text. “There’s four kinds of folks in this world. The ordinary like us and the neighbours… the Cunninghams… the Ewells… and the negros” “Naw, Jem, I think there is just one kind of folks. Folks”. ‘Jem’ literally groups the classes or ‘types of people’ in perfect alignment with the location they are described to live. Harper Lee has used setting as a tool to give the reader a deeper perception of the atmosphere of little Maycomb. It shows the palpable divide between classes geographically and how locations actually separate people so much that they choose not to interact with each other. “Jean Louise, there is no doubt in my mind that they’re good folks. But they’re not our kind of folks….you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit, but he’ll never be like Jem. Besides, there a drinking streak in that family a mile wide. Finch women aren’t interested in that sort of people.”Jem, as most people do, has made the judgement that he and his neighbours are different and apart from the Cunninghams and the Ewells and the negroes but our Scout does not agree because she sees that people are not defined by the place where they live nor their financial status. This shows again how the setting and prejudice are so heavily intertwined.

Setting is used as non-verbal communication to show animosity but also creates an opportunity to induce prejudicial comments. We see the sexism, racism and class prejudice many times in how the black and white people are separated in the courtroom, the way that all ladies are coincidentally homebodies and how being of a lower class affects where you are in the town. This setting that embodies many many social divides, combined with a slow paced life certainly highlights prejudice and reinforces the theme of prejudice. Maycomb, Alabama 1930 is where oppression is as common as dirt.