Literary Elements In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Through clever details, autilize literary elements to explore a variety of social issues within their pieces. One of the most famous instances of such insight is evident in Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel revolves around the idea of racial segregation between those of color and those who are white by describing the tale of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a young, white woman and the societal drama that follows. In order to emphasize the racial segregation, Lee enforces a strong setting, point of view, tone, writing style, epigraphs, and allusions.

Lee places her story in the town of Maycomb Country, an imaginary district supposedly set in southern Alabama. Immediately, the idea of southern Alabama sparks …show more content…
It is important to remember that a epigraph is motto stated at the beginning of the book. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Charles Lamb's famous quotation "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once" is present. Within this quotation, Lee reflects on the situation that Scout's father, Atticus, is in: he must represent a colored man and do everything in his power to prove Tom Robinson's genuine innocence, even if it is at the cost of Atticus's social reputation. Scout lives her life with such simplicity and ignorance, and her solutions often seem impossible and careless to Atticus. However, we must remember that every person, including professional lawyers, were once children and experienced that same sense of freedom. Moreover, there is a very particular allusion that occurs in the twenty-fourth chapter of the novel. For instance, Mrs. Merriweather believes that Eleanor Roosevelt had lost her mind because she had traveled down to Birmingham for the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and sat in the "colored" section, thus defying state authorities due to the fact that Mrs. Roosevelt was violating segregation laws by sitting with those of color. Through this allusion, Lee returns her audience to the social issue of the entire novel: racial segregation and the degrading of colored
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