Racism in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

ABSTRACT

Literature is an interesting discussion which has many discussions as main topic. In this case, the researcher discuss about racism. Racism is a complex problem to solve which happen in many countries and in a long time. Racism appears in To Kill a Mockingbird novel written by Harper Lee. Racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess specific characteristics or abilities to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to others. It is a complex problem happened in 1930s in United States even other countries also fronted this complex problem. Surprisingly, it has been happened since1930s but this problem still exists in this time. By taking account of Emile Durkheim theory, this research focused on analyzing racism in To Kill a Mockingbird novel.

The purpose of this research is to understand well about racism in To Kill a Mockingbird used in Harper Lee’s narration connected to the real condition of social structure and social solidarity in Alabama, United States in 1930s. This research will give deep information about many types of racism in the novel which reflected the real condition in that time. This research is very important to be discussed because it is different from two previous studies before that it is more detail since the researcher only discussed about race relation toward Black people in different period. This study put setting in Alabama, United States in 1930s.

This research is conducted using Emile Durkheim theory which describes racism in To Kill a Mockingbird sentence by sentence even distinct racism even utterance form and attitudes form of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination happened in Alabama society among Black and White people. Actually, racial discrimination shows in Black when Tom Robinson (Nigger) accused in rapping Mayella (White). Here researcher analyzes five types of racism; segregation, prejudice, discrimination, expulsion, and extermination which connected to real condition of Alabama society.

In relation to racial discrimination, the researcher concludes that there are five types of racism are prejudice, discrimination, segregation, extermination and expulsion portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird novel. There is the relationship between racism appears in this novel and racism happened in the real social condition in Alabama, United States. This problem portrayed in the novel.