There are stereotypes on both sides of the racial issues raised in this book, and Lee tries to show that both of them are unfair and generalized, and that there were exceptions on both sides of the Black/white controversies and disagreements in the South.

Lee uses rape as a shocking way to bring racism to the surface, because sexual relations between a white woman and black man were even more volatile than just about any other kind of racial contact. The whites could never accept this, which is why it would be impossible for them to acquit Tom Robinson at his trial. One critic sums up this mentality quite nicely. She writes, "Atticus Finch chided his son, Jem, for wondering why the jury did not give Tom Robinson a prison sentence rather than the death sentence by saying, '[He's] a colored man, Jem. No jury in this part of the...
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