Thursday, December 5, 2013

Atticus and Slaves vs. All

To Kill a Mockingbird, is a book I have been reading in English Class. This book is about a family living in the south during a time of racism against black people. The father, Atticus, of two children, Scout and Jem, is a lawyer. A crime was commited and Atticus felt like he needed to do something or else this person would have no chance to defend himself. Atticus decides to defend the black person. The people of Maycomb are not too happy about it because of what they think black people are like. The town considers blacks to be lower than whites. Scout and Jem have to face the nasty people of the community buzzing about how Atticus is defending a black “criminal”. The townspeople believe the criminal, Tom Robinson, is guilty based on the color of his skin. The story is the struggle of the family trying to ignore the hate they are getting from those who don’t even know Tom.
This source relates to our class for an obvious reason. The people in this story, made a judgment about black people without knowing them, as did the Europeans with the Native Americans or “Indians”. The Spaniards made a preconception based on what they wanted to be true. And that is exactly what people did in Maycomb County. For this reason, I think this is an extremely useful source of information.
 The story teaches a great lesson. The lesson is that people can be easily judged no matter what they already know. For example, they had never even met the Native Americans but they already had their mind made up that they were uncivilized animals that had no education and ate each other. But that is not at all what it should be. The book shows you how easily people form opinions about others and assume things are true.

Both of these situations I have been talking about are both based on the fact that some people make assumptions, mostly bad ones, about what people are like. Europeans even way back then were judging people exactly how they are today.

4 comments:

  1. I liked how you not only connected this important topic to real life, you also connected it to another school subject. I thought that you used a little repetition and you could have used a better phrase than "Both of these situations I have been talking about are both...." I liked how you used very important pictures that helped set a tone and how you placed them perfectly throughout the article.

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  2. I am also reading To Kill a Mockingbird in English class. I would have never thought to connect Atticus’s legal case to our past topic on Native Americans and Europeans I history. The introductory paragraph about the novel that you included in the beginning of your post was a great idea because then people who have not read this book will have a general sense of what it is about. I also like that you included a picture showing the Native Americans and the Europeans, as well as, a picture of Atticus defending ton Robinson in the courtroom. One aspect that I think could have been stronger was to further elaborate, in greater detail, on the connection between To Kill a Mockingbird and our unit in history. I really enjoyed reading this post and liked that you connected two of your classes; great job!

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  3. I liked how you were able to connect history class to english class. This was very clever because most people in our grade are reading this book so they will be able to clearly understand your connection. Also, you could even further relate To Kill a Mockingbird to History class because we are learning about slavery and treating black people differently just because of their race. Overall, i enjoyed reading your paper and thought the pictures really added to your paper and made it easier to read.

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  4. I really liked this post because I feel like it is easy for many kids to relate to, as many of us are currently reading To Kill A Mockingbird in English class. I also loved your writing because it was relatively short and to the point, you got across what you were trying to say without blabbing on with excess detail. The paragraphs weren't too long and were done in big font so it made things easy to read. The overview that you gave on To Kill A Mockingbird was very helpful in jogging my memory on the story, and I'm sure it came in handy fro people who have yet to read it. Your wording could have been a bit better in a few spots in the final two paragraphs, but other than that fantastic job!

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