To Kill A Mockingbird Ignorance Analysis
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” Harlan Ellison, American writer. In To Kill a Mockingbird, ignorance is shown by the Missionary Society, Bob Ewell, and Miss Caroline. “From the kitchen, I heard Grace Merriweather giving a report in the living room on the squalid lives of the Mrunas…” (Lee, 232). The Missionary Society’s goal to ‘help’ indigenous people is ignorant because they are trying to change other people’s way of life when they don’t even understand it. Most missionaries to native tribes couldn’t speak their language and didn’t view their rituals as sacred to them, just as paganism against Christianity. The Missionary Society was also ignorant because they didn’t see the African-American servants as people who would mourn and worry about one of their own, they just saw people who were “grumpy” and needed to get over it. They were hypocrites who tried to fix or change other communities that didn’t need it, even when there was prejudice going on in their own town. If they were truly in touch with the Christian values they threw around, they would have done something to help the Ewell children and the Robinson family in
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“...she found out I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.” (Lee, 17). This goes back to her previous ignorance, where she didn’t understand the students’ individual needs. She insists that her way of learning is the only way that is acceptable even though it is clear some kids need something other than a book on talking cats, the need books that will relate to their life and they need a hands-on approach to their learning, because that’s the kind of life they have had up until this point, a life that required a knowledge of farming and physical work, not poetry or
“...she found out I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.” (Lee, 17). This goes back to her previous ignorance, where she didn’t understand the students’ individual needs. She insists that her way of learning is the only way that is acceptable even though it is clear some kids need something other than a book on talking cats, the need books that will relate to their life and they need a hands-on approach to their learning, because that’s the kind of life they have had up until this point, a life that required a knowledge of farming and physical work, not poetry or