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Why Virgil Tibbs is Unrealistic

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Why Virgil Tibbs is Unrealistic
Why Virgil Tibbs is Unrealistic
It doesn’t exist. People like Virgil Tibbs do not exist; he’s a fictional character that’s just too good to be true for many reasons. Virgil Tibbs may be a strong and confident character but he’s just too perfect a person, and it’s the flaws in a character that makes them believable and reading over the book I realized just how impossible it is that Virgil could exist.
The first unrealistic aspect of Virgil’s character was that he never shows himself making mistakes, “as soon as I was fixed on Mr. Kaufmann, I promptly failed to notice what was going on around me.” Of course, while the book says this it never actually shows this hindering his fantastic abilities of deduction. It doesn’t force him to miss any major clues and he’s never lead so far in the wrong direction that you would think for a moment he would fail the case. He never actually had to admit to being wrong either seeing as how he never accused Kaufmann of being the murderer. If anyone else had been working on this case they would have messed up, done something they regret or get stuck, even if it was only in a minor way.
Alright, I’ll accept that Tibbs is a very calm and passive individual but to stay this way under the conditions he was in is just way too good to be true, especially when you take into account that where he’s from he’s treated with respect. “They call me Mr. Tibbs.” When people are thrown into alien situations, accused of murder, asked to help solve the murder and constantly having to deal with crushing racism, even the best among us would not react as patiently as Tibbs did. Though, in the story Tibbs just ignores the blatant racism of the town even though at one point he’s physically attacked by these people not once is he actually shown reacting.
The last thing and the one that stuck out to me the most in the book was on top of being a calm,

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