2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

As a consequence of the extreme racial prejudice of the townspeople of Maycomb, Robinson is unjustly convicted for a crime that he did not commit. Atticus Finch can be identified as one of Lee’s characters who disobeys the social conventions surrounding racial prejudices in the town of Maycomb. This is first seen when Atticus is appointed as Robinson’s defence attorney – although he acknowledges the fact that “in our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins” (Lee, 1960) (pg.243), he agrees to the position. The repercussions of this is that “the questioning and contesting of basic social values and norms is in principal an attack on the culture of a particular group which disturbs the cohesive structure of that group and threatens to destabilise it” (Paleczny, 2016). This positions the reader to admire Atticus’s initiative to not be swayed by the judgement of the townspeople. From the beginning of the novel, Lee demonstrates the regime that people of power are solely based on colour and a person of colour has no place questioning a white man’s view or judgements. As a result, the African American community are marginalised in Maycomb’s reprehensible hierarchy that the town has committed to for years. Atticus can see the injustice acts of the white community in Maycomb and their treatment towards the African American community. Although he understands the backlash he may receive for defending Robinson, he advises Scout, his daughter: “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win” (pg.84). He reflects to the reader that the racial attitudes of the white community have been enforced over years of generations and are deeply engrained into Maycomb’s culture. However, the quote further demonstrates to the reader Atticus’s determination in

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