How Does Literature Cause Fear In To Kill A Mockingbird

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“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.” (C. S. Lewis). People grow in a landscape of their reality with buildings of thoughts, habits, and emotions. They start off free-minded and over time, build up to a stable state of beliefs. Some insights spur the construction of a building of thought while others catalyze the deconstruction of one. When numerous skyscrapers are built, the person can no longer easily see outside their own constricted, dark world into another’s reality, and very few things can allow them to do so. Thankfully, an option to see beyond their reality is readily available to them: literature. …show more content…
They see monuments they have never seen before and experience a completely different set of emotions. No personal dogmas hold them back from retaining information. “Climbing into [the speaker’s] skin and walking around in it” forces readers to understand the various feelings and decisions, threatening to break down their established structures and alter their beliefs. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the readers see through the view of children during the Jim Crow era and can perceive the consequences of a racist society from a very realistic story much more descriptive than an article about history. Although the readers may believe that most people would stand up against racism, they are forced to notice that most people chose not to do