Fghj

Noor Kamra
Mrs. Vulic
ENG 1D0
January 12 2015
963 words

Exploring the Effects of Prejudice in a Society
Prejudice is the act of making assumptions about people or things without being fully informed. Prejudice is clearly shown in the town of Maycomb in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The two main types of prejudice shown in the book are social prejudice, and racial prejudice. Prejudice is always detrimental to a community.
To begin with, in the novel, social prejudice has a negative effect on the community. Firstly, social prejudice creates boundaries between different social groups. A clear illustration of boundaries between social groups is when Lee writes “‘People up there set ‘em free, but you don’t see ‘em settin’ at the table with ‘em. At least we don’t have the deceit to say to ‘em yes you’re as good as we are but stay away from us. Down here we just say you live your way and we’ll live ours.’”(Lee 234). In Aunt Alexandra’s ladies group, they openly dislike and discuss other groups in their community, while they pride themselves for not keeping up the false image of acceptance and inclusiveness. Creating barriers between people is harmful to society because it creates tension and stress between social classes, making the community more prone to conflict and disagreement. Secondly, social prejudice stops children from achieving their full potential. Harper Lee highlights this problem when she writes “‘ The thing is, 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’”(224) This form of social prejudice makes sure that a child cannot escape the limitations of their social class. Some of the greatest minds are born into poverty and cannot achieve their potential due to the social prejudice, and that slows the progress and negatively affects us as a society. Lastly, social prejudice pressures people to live up to their reputation, no more and no less. In the novel, this is shown...