Unfortunately, prejudice is something we have learned to live with. It has become normal to most people, and is something minorities have struggled against since the beginning of time. To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960’s novel by Harper Lee, about events in a small Alabama town. But if you read between the lines, it is much more than that. In the book, Lee uses skillful manipulation of the setting to show her message about prejudice. This is done through her setting choices such as the layout of the town, the courthouse, and the Finch house. These emphasize aspects of prejudice like class prejudice, racism, and sexism. By exploring the way Harper Lee used the settings of Maycomb to show her key ideas, the reader becomes more aware of injustices around them.

The layout of Maycomb is very segregated and plainly shows these injustices. It is natural within society, that people with less money live further away from the center of town. But when does this fact become a source of prejudice? The town of Maycomb, where the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is set, is a town greatly separated into different factions. The spatial pattern of the town has the wealthy middle-class white people in the center and as you travel outwards from there the residents get poorer and poorer. “There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbours, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the negros”. This pattern, with the wealthy in the middle and the poor on the outskirts makes the poor people seem less important. Harper Lee deliberately does this because it is not an uncommon pattern. We see it in most towns and cities. But when it is brought to the reader’s attention, the reader will have to think about how the lower class citizens are treated in their own town. An example of Harper Lee’s capturing our attention, is when Scout asks if she can invite Walter Cunningham over, who is one of the farming folks in Maycomb. Aunt Alexandra says no, her reason being “Because—he—is—trash”. She is obviously judging him, not on his character, but on where he lives. These harsh words, coming from the mouth of a character who is very unlikeable, forces the reader to reflect on their own behavior towards lower class people. Harper Lee is provoking a negative emotional response in the reader, to further solidify her ideas in their minds.

Another negative emotional trigger is the shocking juxtaposition of the courthouse. Courthouses are a fundamental part of most people’s towns, so Harper Lee uses this too relates To Kill a Mockingbird to real life. Ideally, courthouses are a symbol of truth. By showing that this aspect of a community where we would expect to see justice, is not always as pristine as one would hope, Harper Lee is presenting an unpleasent concept to her readers. American law states that everyone is equal in the court of law. Sadly, this is not always so. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the setting of the courthouse provides a confronting contrast between how things should be, and how things are. Because it is situated at the center of town, the courthouse represents the corruption at the very heart of Maycomb. The corruption that has infiltrated every aspect of life. This is further demonstrated through the trial of Tom Robinson. Despite his obvious innocence, the fact that Tom is black causes the jury to find him guilty. This potent display of racial prejudice, in the one place where equality is said to be guaranteed, causes the reader to realize the irony of the unjust courthouse. The position of the courthouse at the center of town reinforces to the impact of this racism. It is a monument to the failure of the justice system.“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.”. Harper Lee also shows racism through the setting of the courthouse with the treatment of Tom during the trial. For example, how easily Mayella Ewell betrayed Tom by lying when her safety was at risk. Her power over him as a white woman allowed her to extort his vulnerability, then abandon him when his usefulness expired. “she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterward.”. This reminds me of the horse, Boxer, in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. Like Tom, when Boxer becomes useless, he is immediately disregarded despite his selfless services. The inequality Tom faces in the courthouse, where truth is supposed to be paramount, highlights the deterioration of moral values in the town. The people of Maycomb did not care about the truth that the courthouse was meant to bring out. They were blinded by their closed-mindedness, which, like the courthouse, is at the center of their lives.

Like Tom, women in the 1930’s were often treated as less significant. Most women were unemployed because of sexism in the workplace, and outdated ideas about women belonging in the kitchen. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, these attitudes were not seen in the Finch house initially, but when her aunt Alexandra arrives, they become more prominent. For the first time, Scout is exposed to sexist views in her own home. She is constantly made to feel like her tomboy ways are inappropriate. “I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breachers; when I said I could do nothing wearing a dress, she said I shouldn’t be doing things that require pants”. Harper Lee uses the contrast between the Finch house before, and after aunt Alexandra moves in, to show the reader the toxic effects of sexism. “Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born”. This idea is expanded when aunt Alexandra hosts the Missionary Society lunch at the Finch house. Through this event, we see the hypocrisy and pettiness of the women in Maycomb. They gossip and one woman, Mrs. Merriweather, even goes so far as to criticize Atticus Finch, whose house she is in and whose food she is eating. When she hears this slander Mrs. Maudie says “His food doesn’t stick going down does it?” which I think is a brilliant way to combat the hypocritical comment. That this occurs in the Finch house highlights the fact that Mrs. Merriweather didn’t mind eating Atticus’s food despite her disapproval of his defense of a black man. This shows how women in the 1930s were forced into the role of the pathetic, male illustration of women that we see throughout historical texts. For example, in the ancient Greek story of Troy, it was the princess Helen who gets the blame for starting the jealousy-fuelled war. This story was written by men and so the female characters are often not fair representations of women. Aunt Alexandra and her friends are a stark reflection of male perception of females, as Helen was. The Finch house draws attention to the suppression of women, and how they are held back from meeting their full potential. The change in the atmosphere of the setting after aunt Alexandra comes demonstrates this. It changes from a supportive, progressive atmosphere, where Scout could thrive, to a more repressive one. Like Helen of Troy, she felt conflicted and that she had to conform to a stereotypical role that didn’t suit her. This makes the reader feel like they are going back in time and question the circumstances of their living arrangements.

Books such as this one allow authors to present such questioning to a wide audience. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was a cutting edge form of racial activism. Lee selected the setting of Maycomb and extensions of it, in order to display her ideas most effectively. Through this, she also brought many ideas about other types of prejudice to light. The reader sees clearly that class prejudice, racism and sexism exist, not only in the culture of Maycomb but in the world at large. The author does this through her subtle portrayal of certain environments such as the segregated layout of Maycomb, the unjust courthouse, and the effect sexism had on the nature of the Finch house. Through the use of her emphasis on particular locations, this inspirational author makes it obvious to the reader that prejudice in all its forms, has infiltrated every facet of our lives. Harper Lee has caused a greater awareness of this dark aspect of humanity. The reason she did this was to inspire more recognition that you should not judge people so quickly based on prejudices. “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”.