Contents introduction chapter I. Author and synopsis of the story

1.2. Synopsis of To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Alabama during the Depression, and is narrated by the main character, a little girl named Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Her father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer with high moral standards. Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill are intrigued by the local rumors about a man named Boo Radley, who lives in their neighborhood but never leaves his house. Legend has it that he once stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors, and he is made out to be a kind of monster. The children are curious to know more about Boo. The children begin moving closer to the Radley house, which is said to be haunted. They try leaving notes for Boo on his windowsill with a fishing pole, but are caught by Atticus, who firmly reprimands them for making fun of a sad man's life. Other mysterious things happen to the Finch children. A certain tree near the Radley house has a hole in which little presents are often left for them, such as pennies, chewing gum, and soap carved figures of a little boy and girl who bear a striking resemblance to Scout and Jem. The children don't know where these gifts are coming from, and when they go to leave a note for the mystery giver, they find that Boo's brother has plugged up the hole with cement. Atticus decides to take on a case involving a black man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of raping a very poor white girl named Mayella Ewell, a member of the notorious Ewell family, who belong to the layer of Maycomb society that people refer to as "trash .The Finch family faces harsh criticism in the heavily racist Maycomb because of Atticus's decision to defend Tom. But, Atticus insists on going through with the case because his conscience could not let him do otherwise. He knows Tom is innocent, and also that he has almost no chance at being acquitted, because the white jury will never believe a black man over a white woman. Despite this, Atticus wants to reveal the truth to his fellow townspeople, expose their bigotry, and encourage them to imagine the possibility of racial equality. Because Atticus is defending a black man, Scout and Jem find themselves whispered at and taunted, and have trouble keeping their tempers. At a family Christmas gathering, Scout beats up her cloying relative Francis when he accuses Atticus of ruining the family name by being a "nigger-lover". Jem cuts off the tops of an old neighbor's flower bushes after she derides Atticus, and as punishment, has to read out loud to her every day. Jem does not realize until after she dies that he is helping her break her morphine addiction. When revealing this to Jem and Scout, Atticus holds this old woman up as an example of true courage: the will to keep fighting even when you know you can't win. The trial pits the evidence of the white Ewell family against Tom's evidence. According to the Ewells, Mayella asked Tom to do some work for her while her father was out, and Tom came into their house and forcibly beat and raped Mayella until her father appeared and scared him away. Tom's version is that Mayella invited him inside, then threw her arms around him and began to kiss him.³ Tom tried to push her away. When Bob Ewell arrived, he flew into a rage and beat her, while Tom ran away in fright. According to the sheriff's testimony, Mayella's bruises were on the right side of her face, which means she was most likely punched with a left hand. Tom Robinson's left arm is useless due to an old accident, whereas Mr. Ewell leads with his left. Given the evidence of reasonable doubt, Tom should go free, but after hours of deliberation, the jury pronounces him guilty. Scout, Jem and Dill sneak into the courthouse to see the trial and sit in the balcony with Maycomb's black population. They are stunned at the verdict because to them, the evidence was so clearly in Tom's favor. Though the verdict is unfortunate, Atticus feels some satisfaction that the jury took so long deciding. Usually, the decision would be made in minutes, because a black man's word would not be trusted. . Meanwhile, Mr. Ewell threatens Atticus and other people connected with the trial because he feels he was humiliated. He gets his revenge one night while Jem and Scout are walking home from the Halloween play at their school. He follows them home in the dark, then runs at them and attempts to kill them. The elusive Boo Radley stabs Mr. Ewell and saves the children. Finally, Scout has a chance to meet the shy and nervous Boo. At the end of this fateful night, the sheriff declares that Mr. Ewell fell on his own knife so Boo, the hero of the situation, won't have to be tried for murder. Scout walks Boo home and imagines how he has viewed the town and observed her, Jem and Dill over the years from inside his home. Boo goes inside, closes the door, and she never sees him again. Since thousands of years, people suffer from racism for several reasons. Racism is the supremacy one person over another or one group over another for physical, ethnic or social characteristics. It is a belief that was spread in the New World from the early times of its construction. Stripping people's freedom under slavery is a kind of racism that the blacks were subjected to. The African Americans suffered and they are still suffering from racism and discrimination. Why were they subjected to racism and prejudice? They were subjected to prejudice and racism because they came to the New World as slaves, but the major reason is their skin colour. The blacks lived on large plantations that belonged to white owners. Besides, they were put to work in fields or the household of the plantation to help the owners. These slaves were regarded as a means of comfort to the white people and they lived in extreme poverty and hard conditions. The slaves were supposed to obey their masters’ orders and be under their control. In the southern colonies of America, slavery was an institution and the southerners approved laws to dehumanize the blacks and make it easier for them to control these slaves who were regarded as property. Discriminating laws banned slaves from their basic rights such as education, marriage, and freedom. Slaves were even harshly punished if they committed any mistake. All these notions were discussed in To Kill a Mockingbird which is an American classic novel in a very dynamic way. To Kill a Mockingbird is not only a fun novel to read. Harper Lee wrote the novel to demonstrate the way in which people should live in harmony, respect and kindness. She criticised the white racist society through her novel.⁴ The writer tended to discuss racism in the American society and to reveal the truth that no one before her dared to say. The novel received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, which place it among the best adult novels ever written. The most crucial theme that the novel discusses is the nature of racism. It is about whether racism is transmitted through genetics or acquired from social behaviours that individuals are exposed to. The debate in a specific term is to what extent society has an impact on the developpement of the racist quality in human being's personality. The white people were known for their superiority as they were of a light skin colour. This dissertation will discuss the lifestyle that dominated the South and the course of the slaves from slave trade until their emancipation. The slaves’ misery continued even after their emancipation because of the white supremacy that dominated the southern society after the Reconstruction Era. These notions are depicted in the novel through a false accusation of taking advantage of a white woman by a black man. This trial had a great impact on the course of the events of the novel. This dissertation deals with the historical and socio-cultural study of racism in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Divided into two chapters, this study tackles racial discrimination and injustice that the blacks have been exposed to in a white racist society. The selected novel illustrates the impact of the historical events, society and its culture on the treatment of the African Americans. The historical and the socio-cultural contexts contribute in some way in shaping the relationship between the blacks and the whites and consequently explain the whites’ racial attitudes towards the blacks or the African Americans. To achieve its objective, this dissertation follows the critical perspective of Raymond Williams, considering the importance of the relationship between the text and its context. The historical events and the socio-cultural environment during this period of time cannot be overlooked while trying to understand the nature of this racial attitude and prejudice. It is widely acknowledged that each period of time has certain characteristics including cultural structures, social conventions, traditions, and values which describe the image of society in a certain era. In Culture and Society 1780-1950, Williams (1950) argues 3 that “[a]n essential hypothesis in the development of the idea of culture is that the art of period is closely and necessarily related to the generally prevalent ‘way of life’ . . . in consequence, aesthetic, moral, and social judgments are closely interrelated” (137). In other words, art or literature cannot be separated from its context which is typified in the social, the cultural, the economic, and the political conditions of its time and place. In “Literature in Society,” Williams (1977, a) also points out that “in any given phase of common experience writers are sharing the life of their society. Society is not something fixed beyond them, but their activity is an activity within. The making of literature is part of the social process”. Since authors are part of their society, they usually derive themes from the world surrounded by; consequently, literature and society are bound together. In his examination of culture, Williams coins the phrase “the structure of feeling.” It refers to the lived experience of people or to “the culture of a certain generation” in a particular period of time. “Structures of feeling” include the interaction between official beliefs, laws, and dominant ideologies within a society and the way people live in their cultural context⁵. Drawing on Williams’s arguments and in line with the black-white conflict, this dissertation suggests that the historical social environment influences this relationship. This research contains two chapters. The first chapter is a theoretical part of the research while the second chapter is the practical part of the research. The theoretical chapter is a historical background of slavery and its influence on the Southern life from the early settlement of the colonists till the Reconstruction Era. This chapter is based on the historical approach to present historical events and facts about the different segments of slaves’ life at that time. The second chapter, on the other hand, analysed of the characters of the novel who were directly affected by racism to conclude at the end which factor played a role in inserting racism in human beings whether it is innate quality or learned prejudice. Marriage had an important role in the life of southerners. They arranged strategic marriage to ensure their sons prominent political positions and to secure their daughters economically. Women would be socially humiliated if she did not get married at the age of 25 years old because at that time, girls generally got married at the age of 13‐14. Woman there had no legal rights. They were not engaged in the political life and had not the right to vote. In addition to that, they could not own properties and establish their independent business. However, women could own business and property or work as a housemaid for prosperous families if she did not get married or lost her husband. For married women, if they had any property or got heritage, they should give it to the husband. Southern women 7 were known for their domestic hospitality because prosperous women were not allowed to go out in public space without male company and if one did so, she would put her reputation and safety under risk. The southerners did not have public schools but the rich families brought private tutors for their kids at home because they believed that education is the parents’ responsibility and it is a private concern. They only had to make that their kids were learning the social values that fitted the society in which they were to spend their lives. Boys went to have their courses in fall and winter when they did not have nothing to do but the rich sent their sons to the European universities for further education. Girls were taught in summer and could go to school to learn how to well behave as ladies and how to govern a household. The economic system was the other aspect that characterized life in the South. Finding gold and becoming rich was the hope of the colonists when they went to the New World, but the fact was very different because in reality there were no gold. So soon, they accepted that agriculture is their salvation because the land was fertile and the weather was moderate besides the rivers that provided the plantations with water. Still, the main factor was the agricultural products which took a new sort like tobacco that quickly spread in Europe. These products guaranteed the southerners profitable markets where to sell the products or exchange them for other stuff they needed. African people were brought by the colonists to solve this situation. These Africans were hunted by enemy tribes then sold to white slave traders who bought as many as they could since it was a profitable business, then took them to America on-board ships. They suffered too much during this journey from the hard conditions that cost some of them their lives while others committed suicide because they could not support the miserable situation they suddenly found themselves in. they were taken to work as indentured servants when they first arrived, but with the development of agriculture, the need for workers increased. As a result, the planters enslaved them as a 8 solution to avoid the shortage of labor. The whites justified this act by saying that as they brought them with their own money, they had the right to treat or consider them as their property. After that the real misery, indignity, and discrimination started because slavery became a central element of the economic system. The southerners relied economically on slave labor because the landowners wanted to make sure that their plantations were selfsufficient and independent by producing everything they needed there. The landowners depended on slave labor to supply the massive demand of the world for crops to make fortunes. For instance, in Virginia in 1770 only 8% of the population owned 62% of the general wealth. Growing tobacco was a highly exhausting task that required considerable skills, hard work, and permanent supervision. For this reason, the planters preferred WestAfricans who were skilled in cultivating crops and appointed them to work about 15 hours per day in groups of 20 to 25 slaves under the supervision and direction of an overseer. The slaves had to drain swamps, rake fields, burn stubble and break the soil to cultivate crops such as wheat, rice, and sugar. Cultivating crops needed an enormous workforce so the southerners invested in slavery. By 1770 there were about 45.000 Africans only in Virginia.⁶ The majority of them were males because the growth of the slave population in the South was as a result of slave trade not to natural increase. But when the rate of death increased among the slaves because of hard conditions, the slaveholders encouraged slave marriage. In some counties, slave women were given their freedom once they give birth to 15 children. Growing tobacco exhausted the soil which threatened the southern economy, but the colonists, who always relied on the world need for some products, made of the American South number one in cultivating cotton, which was widely used in textile industry. Growing cotton was a hard task that recommended long hours of work. While Eli Whitney, a mechanical inclined graduate of Yale University from Massachusetts, was invited to visit a southern plantation in Georgia, he paid attention to how much time picking cotton took. 9 After discussing this problem with the plantation owner, he came up with the idea to construct a machine that separates the black seeds of cotton from the fiber. In 1793, he succeeded in making the device that helped to remove the seeds easily and quickly. The fibers were cleaned fifty times more than it could be done by slaves. According to James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton, cotton production increased from less than 140.000 pounds a year before inventing the cotton gin to 17 million pounds in 1800.