“The concrete pillars supporting its south roof were too heavy for their burden.”
I believe that the quote above from To Kill a Mockingbird symbolises Atticus’s struggle with trying to Lawyer for Tom Robinson (a black man who is accused of rapeing a white woman). No matter how hard Atticus tried to stop Tom Robinson from going to jail, Tom was doomed from the start as juries in those days only had white people on them and a lot of them were racist against black people. Also, Atticus lawyering for a black man made other people in the town either love him or hate him. All the people who hated Atticus constantly spoke behind his back about it and in the worst cases threatened him and his family. Despite all of this he carried on lawyering for Tom all the way up until his death.
“Greek revival columns clashed with the big nineteenth century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determined too preserve every physical scrap of the past.”
The quote from above also symbolises that a lot of people in the 20th century still held on to racist views from the 19th century when slavery was around, and also the juries were like a rusty unreliable instrument because they were always unreliable and always had racist views.
I believe that the two quotes above symbolises how Harper Lee feels about other peoples racist views and how no one seems to want to let go of them. She is also trying to point out to people how badly racism was in America in the 20th century.
That is my analysis on the two quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird.
March 27, 2015 at 10:43 am
Adam,you give good examples about what the contrete pillars represent but if you was to improve this then you could go into more detail about atticus’ struggle while supporting Tom Robinson (A black man who is accused of rape). You also give good reasons about Tom Robinson being a black man and not getting given a fair trial. You can improve this by reffering back to the civil rights movement and how hard living in america was for balck people. Adam you have given good reasons and back them up very well in this piece but in order to get a better grade you will need to go deeper into each reason giving a link to each one.