When Scout talks about a caste system in Maycomb, she is referring to the fact that Maycomb has a system where people are born into their social status based on the history of their family. A caste system is a system that assigns people and families into social statuses, and in this case, the people in Maycomb are born into their statuses based on their family and past ancestors. In a caste system, people are assigned to their status from birth, and no matter how much better they were compared to their ancestors, they can not change their social class and move either up or down. When Scout talks about the caste system in Maycomb, she was talking a lot about money and land. Families that have more money and more land for longer amounts of time, are usually well off and higher up in status, and families like the Cunninghams and Ewells, who both extremely poor, are lower in statuses. When Aunt Alexandra arrives in Maycomb in order to help take care of Jem and Scout and provide “feminine influence”, Scout gains more knowledge about the caste system, and she narrates, “the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another”(Lee 175). Scout recognizes that older generations act the same as the younger generations of the same family, and after a while, these actions are predictable and define each family permanently. Scout realizes that the further back a family can be traced, and the longer they have had the same land, they tend to have a higher social status, and that this caste system has a huge presence in Maycomb County.
Do you think any caste systems exist in society today? What impact would a caste system have on our community?
I totally agree with what you said, I think that in present times it is harder for people to acknowledge caste systems. In the town of Maycomb it is easy to have a caste system because everyone knows each other and knows their family's history. But, in present day towns, citizens mostly only know their neighbors, not the whole block or few blocks surrounding the town. Basically the only way to obtain a caste system is to be famous for something great or something terrible. Whereas in Maycomb even the smallest unconcealed details about a family is known by everyone.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said, I think that caste systems do exist in today's society. However, I don't think that they are as explicit as Maycomb's caste system. For example, if a famous basketball player has a kid, a lot of people will expect that he or she is good at basketball. Nevertheless, the community won't go crazy if they aren't good at basketball. If our community had a caste system it would create a lot of unhappiness and outrage. If someone really successful has a kid, that means that everybody from that family from now on has to be successful. This creates unnecessary stress on the kid and makes other families unhappy. It makes other families unhappy because if they didn't have the best upbringing, that means that no matter how hard their kids work they cannot have a better life.
ReplyDeleteI agree abut I'd also like to link this to the rest of the book's history. Caste system has two definitions but both boil down to the basic concept that in a caste system the situation you are born into is the one you stay in. Your caste is defined by your property, savings and profession. A recurring theme in TKaM is traditionalism, mainly Southern traditions. It is stated in the book that, for Finches, "It was customary..to remain on...Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. " (Lee 3). This shows that Atticus has partially left his initial caste. This fits with his character being less traditionalist and having different views from most people in Maycomb.
ReplyDeleteI agree abut I'd also like to link this to the rest of the book's history. Caste system has two definitions but both boil down to the basic concept that in a caste system the situation you are born into is the one you stay in. Your caste is defined by your property, savings and profession. A recurring theme in TKaM is traditionalism, mainly Southern traditions. It is stated in the book that, for Finches, "It was customary..to remain on...Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. " (Lee 3). This shows that Atticus has partially left his initial caste. This fits with his character being less traditionalist and having different views from most people in Maycomb.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, on how the amount of land and the family's history shows how people look on themselves. Scout's way of thinking is that people have a way of acting, such as gestures and attitudes, and she does not understand fully of the actual definition of a caste system. It states in the book, "... No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid...(Lee 175). She thinks that people have habits, and as generations go on, people notice the other person's habits, until that is what people think about whenever think about the person. Although Scout does not exactly know what a caste system is, she gets the general idea. Also I think that today, there are not as much of a Caste System than there was back then, but sometimes I think there are caste system when we do not even know. them. An example is during school, there are sometimes social groups and statuses, such as being "popular". That is a Caste System even though it is less shown, and is not as important as it was back during the 1900's.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points on caste systems, but I believe there caste systems are not as severe as those in Maycomb County. Although when everybody is born they are in the same social status as their family, once they grow up if the get a good education, they can lift themselves up from their current status, or the opposite and go down in the social ranks. In Maycomb County, it is not as easy to change social class, because of how closely related everybody is and that makes it harder to change ranks, since everyone knows who you are and judge you from your family's previous generations. If we had a caste system, your family would be viewed the same for the rest of their lives, without a chance to change social class.
ReplyDelete