Social Life in To Kill a Mockingbird
Social Life in To Kill a Mockingbird
“Social life is mutual negotiation and society, social order relies on mutual negotiation between individuals; this represents both creed and particular reality in American society.” – Richard Friedrich Munch. Someone’s social life can be imperative in deciding how they live their life. This is also true in Harper Lee’s To Kill A mockingbird, a book focused on Jem and Scout Finch, two young children trying to survive through childhood in Maycomb, a 1930’s town that can be everything but sensitive to others. Such as: a young man who was harassed by the neighborhood children, the local Cunningham family who were looked down upon by almost the entire town, and Tom Robinson, a young black man who is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Harper Lee shows that there are two types of outsiders; one type got there by choice because for some reason they don’t agree with society and how things work, while others were pushed away and placed in that position.
Dolphus Raymond chooses to be outside of the norm. He’s an old white man who married into a black family and doesn’t care what any one has to say about it, he shows this many times in the novel. In this quote Raymond is talking to Scout and Dill, a friend of the Finch children, in the yard outside the courtroom the afternoon of the trial: ‘“Secretly, Miss. Finch, I’m not much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.”’(pg.200) Mr. Raymond tries to explain to the children that he’s not really an alcoholic. He just wants everyone to think that he is so they can have some excuse as to why he lives his life the way he does. But he really lives like that because he doesn’t want to be part of the town. He only wants to be with the people he loves and relates to, the black people of Maycomb. Dolphus Raymond is an outsider by choice.
Boo Radley wants to be alone. He’s a young man who has basically become a legend through children’s’ imaginations and the stories they’ve come up with. This is how he’s lived his entire life. One night Jem and Scout discuss this and why he’s never come out of...