How To Kill A Mocking Bird Essay, Research Paper

After viewing the film To Kill A Mocking Bird, I found it to be a very interesting and an informative piece of work. To see how people lived in the years during the great depression and how society was structured was enlightening. The Finch family lived a modest lifestyle, as compared to other families during that time. The movie centers around the Finch family and their day to day life. From the beginning it was obvious that the children in the family, Scout and Jem, were very courteous towards all adults, unlike what appears to be the norm in today s society. Although there was no mother figure in the children s life, as the mother died during childbirth, and they were being raised by their father, Atticus, they appear to well adjusted. All too often when a child commits a crime or does something that disagrees with the standards of today s society, we are quick to blame it on the fact that the child was raised in a single parent home. I do acknowledge that a lot of things have changed in our lives from the time of the depression, to the current time, but I believe other factors may be involved. The film also shows us how other people managed to make ends meet during this time. Money was hard to come by during the depression, so people would sometimes substitute work or foods for money to pay off debts they owed. This form of payment, a bartering system, is still used to this day, but not as prevalent as then. We also get a look how racism was back then. When Scout and Jem are shown at school, you don t see any black children playing in the schoolyard or attending school. Back then schools were segregated, white children and black children did not attend school together! As matter of fact it was not uncommon that black children did not receive any formal education due to fact they could not attended a school with white children. There were schools for black children, but they were very, very few and very far away, making it all most impossible to attend. We all know that this is not the situation today. Every child regardless of race is afforded the opportunity to receive a well- rounded education.

Next, the film deals with racism on another level; a black man is arrested for the crime of rape, the victim being a white woman. Mr. Finch (Atticus) is an attorney and agrees to represent and defend the black man on the charges. During the course of the trail it becomes quite obvious that the black man (Tom) is innocent of the allegations brought against him regarding this matter. From the start, during this time, law enforcement investigative techniques were neither as sophisticated nor as available to all police or sheriff s office. In today s judicial system it is very difficult to secure a conviction based on one person s word against another, you need to corroborate ones testimony with physical evidence to secure a conviction. During the trail there were several times when a defendant s attorney would not only object to the line of questioning, but also surely demand a miss trail. As the trail continues the man is found to be guilty base solely on the verbal accounts provided by the victim. As the ending of the movie nears, you learn that Tom was shot and kill while trying to escape for the authories that had custody on him. One could not help to wander if this killing was a racially motivated killing.