Harper Lee uses setting to reinforce the idea of prejudice in her book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in a masterful way. The book is set in Maycomb, a microcosm of American society in the 1930’s, particularly in the Southern States. Maycomb is shown as a place defined by economic hardship (post the Great Depression), racial segregation and prejudice. Directed towards the groups and individuals of Maycomb, Harper Lee explores the three main aspects of prejudice: how it is fear based, generational and non-experience based.

Within the setting of 1930’s Maycomb, the setting of the courthouse helps us understand particularly that prejudice is not based on experience. The courthouse is a key place in the book and reveals how the law treated African-Americans in the time the book was set. We are shown this with the trial of Tom Robinson (an African-American), who was accused of raping a white woman (Mayella Ewell).

The evidence presented at the trial shows us that Tom had to be innocent, so we are surprised when we learn that the jury finds him to be guilty. We question ourselves as to how the jury could not ‘see’ Atticus’ compelling argument and ignore his powerful finishing statement when he begs for them to “In the name of God, do your duty”. The answer to this in simple terms is that the jury did not provide an accurate representation of the Maycomb County. While there were plenty of women and African-Americans in Maycomb, we know that the jury did not include either. Rather than being racially and gender diverse, the jury was all white and all male. Scout describes the jury as “Sunburned, lanky, they seemed to be all farmers, but this was natural: townfolk rarely sat on juries, they were either struck or excused.” Scout’s description confirms what history tells us, that courthouses were indeed, composed of all white and all male juries in the time the book was set.

Despite knowing that the jury was monochromatic and all male, it still seems to defy belief how every single person on the jury convicted Tom when there was compelling evidence to suggest he was innocent. The jury literally did not ‘see’ the accused’s physical impairment or ‘see’ that Tom could not have caused the injuries from the bashing Mayella received. The lived experience the jury were having in that room had to imply that someone else inflicted the injuries – so either one person hit her and another raped her, or one person did both. It also means Mayella lied, which should have blown the case out of the water. How could the jury not see what was in front of them? As readers we can only draw the conclusion that it was because prejudice against African-Americans was so strong in the time the book was set; it was like a filter that would deny even the plainest truth, i.e. prejudice was not based on experience, but completely defied reason. Tom was undeniably “a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth”. Lee shows us that in 1930’s Maycomb it was automatically assumed that people in Mayella’s social stratum of ‘white trash’ were more truthful that the African American Stratum of society. This was purely due to their position in that hierarchy and their colour. Against this backdrop we are shown that the jury would have thought they were doing the right thing in convicting Tom. Through their ingrained filter they would have ‘seen’ Mayella’s version of events to be more truthful than Tom’s, despite the visual evidence to the contrary. Atticus confirms that “when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins.” By placing the trial at a time when when juries were always all white and all male, Lee presents a crystal clear view of where the power lay (white males), what their view of non-whites was, and how even in the “One place where a man ought to get a square deal”, prejudice won.

So why would people defy their own experience and not see reason?  The setting of the book helps us see the role of intergenerational beliefs and fear: The abolition of slavery (1865) was only roughly  65 years before the book was set, that’s less than a lifetime. Maycomb was set in the Deep Southern States, an area whose wealth had largely depended on slavery. People in the Southern States had died to uphold the right to keep slaves in the American Civil War. The South lost to the North but attitudes did not change. We see this in the book when Scout’s younger cousin calls Atticus a “Nigger Lover”. Grandparents and parents were clearly passing down their derogatory views of black people to their children i.e. it was generational. As prejudice was being passed down, many people in Maycomb did not realise how racist their views were. Lee uses the setting of the lead-up to the Second World War to demonstrate this nicely. This is shown when Scout’s teacher says “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced… There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a mystery to me.” After the trial, Scout hears her teacher displaying the derogatory views mentioned earlier when her teacher says “It’s time somebody taught ’em a lesson, they were gettin‘ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us.”    

(Scout): “…Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an‘ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home—”.

This reveals that Scout is quite an unconventional child as she challenges the prejudice of her teacher – this could be due to her innocence, although by her age most kids had that generational aspect of prejudice passed down, as we saw with her cousin. Therefore, Scout challenging the norms of the time is more likely to be Atticus, her father being unusual compared to the rest of society.

The fear based aspect of racial prejudice in Maycomb originated from slavery. Lee helps us understand this by setting the book at a time where slavery was in living memory of many of the characters, e.g. Mrs Dubose. The Southern States had been extremely wealthy in the 1800’s and had built their wealth in the cotton fields on the backs of slave labour  The cotton industry was so important that in 1860, 61% of the population were slaves in the rural deep South. As Maycomb was situated in this area (i.e. Alabama), slaves outnumbered the white population by a considerable amount. Shockingly history.com records that “Delegates to the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787… At a time when there were nearly 700,000 slaves living in the United States, worth an estimated $210 million in today’s dollars… Delegates agreed that each slave would count as three-fifths of a person.” As the slave population in the USA began to grow, slave auctions became more common and slaves were seen as assets and valuable property rather than human beings. Movies like “Twelve Years a Slave” depict the cruelty and evil that white people showed towards African-American slaves. Seeing how badly African Americans had been treated in the period of slavery, white people were now scared of them i.e. they were now free in large numbers. African-American people were hard working and very physically capable – their ancestors survived the hard labour and horrific transportation from their homelands to America. The outnumbering amount of African-American people, along with their physical capabilities meant they could have easily overpowered the white people if they wanted to. It is therefore not surprising that Scout’s teacher thought that African-Americans “were gettin‘ way above themselves”. The courthouse of Maycomb is a stage that shows how whites used their position of power and control (with the legal system and education) to keep the African-American people subjugated.

Harper Lee incorporates the setting of the 1930’s in her book to help us understand the three main aspects of prejudice. The background of slavery and the Civil War shows us where the strong racial prejudice in the Southern States comes from, as shown with the fictional town of Maycomb. The setting of this story had a strong effect on me; it made me see the impact that slavery had on the relationship between whites and blacks in the USA even after slavery had been abolished. It also made me think that this explains the roots of racial prejudice in America even to this day, e.g. with the treatment of African-Americans in court cases. I recently learnt about an African-American man who had been falsely accused for raping a white woman in 1981. He spent 29 years in prison before a DNA test was finally carried out in 2010 to prove he was innocent. If this man had been white would he have been convicted guilty in the first place? After thinking America has come so far in racial equality does the racial prejudice still remain to this day as strong as it was nearly a century ago?