Download English text response Essay

English text response Essay
Pavel
Nikolaev
Social justice always means a struggle. The struggle for those groups who have been made weak or powerless is to find
justice. Discuss in reference to the text.
In to ‘kill a Mockingbird’, the author describes several social justice issues that affect a number of people in the book. The main
justice issue in the novel is racism against black people and the main victim of this justice issue is Tom Robinson. The Ewell
family are also victimized by the people of Maycomb and are considered white trash. Boo Radley is a victim of rumours and also
suffers from the pressure of the Maycomb community. All these characters and families struggle and suffer from social injustice.
Tom Robinson and the black community, in the novel, are rendered victims of social injustice simply because they are black. Tom
was accused of rape and the trial which he was supposed to participate in, was just merely a formality, his plight was inevitable
as a black man’s word against a white man’s word was powerless. It is this fact that that characterizes all the issues between the
black and white communities at that time. That is the reason why blacks for such a long time suffered and struggled under the
white man’s hand to become equal, because the white man had taken everything they had right down to the thing that every
human being needs; the freedom of thought and action. “As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day
of your life,” Tom Robinson’s last fight for freedom was when he tried to escape imprisonment and ran away from the guards,
only to be shot by the guards several times. The guards undoubtedly tried to kill Tom and not just stop him from running like
Heck Tate said. The murder of Tom is a perfect example of the way the black community was victimized by social injustice.
Despite the Ewell’s being white people, they are too victims of social injustice. The main reasons for this are the way the family
is run by Bob Ewell and the financial position of the family. The children weren’t raised properly and are very filthy in all ways
possible. They are pretty much illiterate and are troublemakers. They have a reputation for only coming one day to school every
year. Bob Ewell has a reputation of a Drunk. And the only somewhat normal member of the Ewell’s family, Mayella, has to suffer
from her dad abusing her and the laborious task of looking after the other children. And the main problem for her is that she
can’t do anything about it, she is stuck there forever because she can’t leave the children alone and she can’t fend for herself if
she decides to run away, primarily because she won’t be accepted into the community because she is an ‘Ewell’ and is
considered white trash. Mayella and the Ewell family are all victims of social injustice
Boo (Arthur) Radley is one of the main victims of the social injustices that the Maycomb community happily provides. When he
was little he did a few deeds that ever since have gotten him locked inside the house. And ever since there has been a
reputation of a killer or murderer stuck to him. And the fact that he isn’t allowed to leave the confines of his house, is just as
good as life in prison, only cosier. This is because his family didn’t want him to get into more trouble after a trial as a teenager.
Now for the rest of his life, boo is imprisoned by his own family due to their worry for their family’s social status. Not only is boo
restricted to the confines of his own house, he also has to wear the burden of a ghastly person or a ghost that haunts his house
and walks around at night peeking at little children through their bedroom windows. This alone is a social injustice as all the
made up accusations are false and force a man to never leave his house yet this man has never done anything wrong. This could
easily put Boo Radley on a par with Tom Robinson who is repressed and forced to go along with what the white society tells him
too because if he doesn’t, he is as good as dead. Boo’s saviour act at the end of the novel, however, was justified and Boo Radley
was spared an inquest . Boo’s act was his key to freedom and quite possibly ended his struggle for social justice in the eyes of
the reader.
Despite the different origins to their, problems, all the characters suffer from social injustice of the maycomb community. They
are all looked down upon and repressed in sort of way, and are all considered lower than everyone ‘normal’. There are different
ways that these characters are affected by social injustice. The black community is considered sub-human and is limited to what
it can do in every aspect of life. Tom Robinson is a good example of the evildoings of the white people against the black
community. Boo Radley is an example of false accusation by the community and repression and the Ewell’s are repressed
because of the way they live and their social class. The possible catalyst for all these problems is over confidence in an ideology,
one of them being white superiority, and another would be that if someone behaves strangely in relation to what most people
do in the society, you have authority over them.
Pavel Igorevich Nikolaev