Representations of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Around age 10, there is a marked change in a child’s perspective. The world is no longer simply a wonderland of curiosities, but a popularity contest. The girls begin to make up and form cliques, and the boys become showmen, testing themselves with their fists. Think Mean Girls or The Outsiders. In Lacan’s terms, once we identify as “other” in the mirror stage, the beasts of jealousy and self-awareness arise. This is a time in psychological terms when children, going through their first major identity crisis, often begin to label others into two categories: the in-group and the out-group.

Meet Tom and Scout. They are characters at this very stage and life, and while at times they are happy-go-lucky, boisterous troublemakers, at others, they are young adults dealing with a daunting world sharply divided along racial lines. Tom Sawyer is a mischievous urchin who steals jars of jam and tricks other boys into working for him. However, his lighthearted antics take a turn for the worse when he stumbles across a graveyard. He witnesses the murder of a man by Injun Joe, and life is no longer a piece of jam pie.

Although Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer doesn’t directly address issues of race, as his epic masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does, the character of Injun Joe depicts racial stereotypes in a more subtle way. Let’s not ignore the fact that Joe is a cruel killer. Who hasn’t had nightmares of the giant killer chasing Tom and Becky in the cave? However, he represents a term that will most likely appear on the AP Psychology Exam: the self-fulfilling prophecy. The rest of the town treats him like a savage and doesn’t accept him into the community due to his Native American roots. When a person is treated relentlessly in a certain way, it’s hard not to live up to this characterization. Individuals view ingroups as more or less diverse, while they view outgroups as a single stereotype. Joe is a victim of the latter. More than that, Joe’s indiscretions are acts of revenge; While on the surface he may seem like a one-dimensional character, whose terrible acts simply stem from greed, his motives are far more complex. The settlers horribly displaced the Native Americans from their land, and in part he is avenging the wrongs they have suffered.

Tom Sawyer is also a mixed bag of tricks. He is such a cunning knave that even when he takes the blame for Becky or saves a man’s life by exposing the killer, he is not humble and enjoys the rewards of attention and praise. This really stems from the insecurity that inevitably comes with being a teenager. His unstable identity suggests that he is at a stage where prejudices and stereotypes can easily take hold; Although he appears to be rebelling against the adults, paradoxically he is deeply influenced by their attitudes and actions. In the end, there’s no clear resolution to Tom’s identity crisis or the town’s prejudice, just as there’s no immediate cure for teenage angst or deep-seated racism.

To a greater extent, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird is confronted with the confusion of adult prejudices. Her father defends a black man who was wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Her family becomes outcasts in a racist town, and Scout, in addition to trying to deal with normal teenage confusion, struggles with the town’s hatred of her father. When she asks why they are ostracized, Atticus replies, “Black lover is just one of those terms that doesn’t mean anything, like brat. It’s hard to explain: ignorant, vulgar people use it when they think someone is favoring someone.” Blacks above themselves. It has crept into usage with some people like us, when they want a common ugly term to label someone.” This quote from To Kill a Mockingbird explains that racism is a lot like teen bullying and name calling; kids are, by definition ignorant and therefore often in conflict with each other due to mistaken identity Atticus is therefore in a sense saying that these adults have never grown up – their insecurity and ignorance perpetuate racism.

It’s easy to see these novels as works against discrimination in a post-civil rights society, but are they really? Do you think Mark Twain is exposing the injustice of prejudice and stereotypes, or believing them? Injun Joe is portrayed in an extremely negative light. Although To Kill a Mockingbird clearly advocates against racism, the novel still negatively stereotypes African-Americans as helpless human beings who need to be protected by white people. Although both books are now recommended for AP US History students, they have been banned from schools for their own problematic interpretations of race. This ambiguity shows that stereotypes are hard to avoid; it requires a conscious effort not to see the world in out-of-group terms. Often, as wayward teens, we embrace stereotypes to make sense of the world, and it’s our job as adults to break down these categories to reveal the truth.