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To Kill A Mockingbird 12 Jim Crow, Part 2 83 Views
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Description:
Were black people portrayed as stereotypes in To Kill A Mockingbird? Was Harper Lee trying to draw attention to the problems with stereotypes, or did she believe them? Hit play to find out.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in To kill a mockingbird jim
- 00:07
crow part two eyelash one of the main questions that
- 00:12
people have about to kill a mockingbird as as much
- 00:15
as it's clearly anti racism that's thing now today everyone's
- 00:19
anti racism but it's clearly anti racism But does it
Full Transcript
- 00:23
still portray these stereotypes of black people And yes it
- 00:26
does Critics of the novel will tell you that this
- 00:31
is the story of how a white man came in
- 00:33
and saved the black man which by the way he
- 00:35
didn't actually save him But it's this story of you
- 00:39
know black people need white people to protect everyone all
- 00:42
these my people need an atticus in their life He's
- 00:45
essentially a stereotype of white person on and he comes
- 00:48
in swoops in and says you know i'm going to
- 00:50
take a stand against this And so while black people
- 00:54
in the novel are portrayed as you know loving kind
- 00:58
good people they're also portrayed a simpleton sze they are
- 01:04
you know not as educated so no and so instead
- 01:07
we get characters like calpurnia who is you know the
- 01:12
stern black kind of essentially nanny slash housekeeper for a
- 01:16
scout jem and what she turns into is the stereotype
- 01:20
of the wise old black woman harper lee could have
- 01:23
chosen to make her more complex character and critics of
- 01:28
the book will say you know because she didn't it's
- 01:30
showing that you know she didn't understand all the complexities
- 01:33
and she treated black stereotypes But it's possible what harper
- 01:36
lee was doing was kind of calling other people out
- 01:38
for doing that and kind of showing this is what
- 01:40
people thought of black people It was there's a wise
- 01:43
old black woman and there's you know the crippled victim
- 01:46
and and none of these characters really have a lot
- 01:49
of agency in the book but they didn't really have
- 01:52
a lot of agency soon kind of go either way
- 01:55
on on whether it's harper lee looking at it to
- 01:57
simply or if she's actually trying to to a specific
- 02:00
point we have to remember our bellies not writing this
- 02:02
in the thirty she's writing in the sixties so she's
- 02:05
coming at it from a different time period and then
- 02:08
we're reading it in a different time period So we
- 02:09
have a story set in the thirties britain in the
- 02:12
sixties so it's really all about perspective and how you
- 02:15
think about it No Where black people portrayed as stereotypes
- 02:21
in the novel was harper lee trying to draw attention
- 02:24
to the problems with stereotypes Or did she believe them
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