Miss Gates confused Scout because she says that it is evil to discriminate against Jews even though she discriminates against African-Americans and Harper Lee includes this to remind the reader that Scout still notices the racism and hypocrisy of adults around her. One of Scout’s classmates talks about Hitler for his current events topic. Their teacher, Miss Gates, begins to talk about why Hitler is evil. She talks about how unjust and evil he is. This confuses Scout because she also recalls Miss Gates saying, “It’s time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves,”(Lee, 331) about African Americans. Scout knows that what her teacher said is racist and she realizes that Miss Gates doesn’t even notice her own hypocrisy. Scout begins to realize how democracy in Maycomb is not “equal rights for all, special privileges for none,”(Lee, 328). Harper Lee includes this scene for the same reason that she included the scene where Dill started crying. Lee wants to show that Scout and Dill haven’t been corrupted by the racism of their county. Scout still has an innocent view of the world. In that world, if someone is not permitted to do something then everyone else shouldn’t be allowed to either. Miss Gates’s racist hypocrisy confuses Scout because she has not yet been desensitized to Maycomb’s racism.
This point is especially enforced when Ms. Gates says Germany's government is a dictatorship, but in America everyone is free of prejudice and is equal. "Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Pre-ju-dice she enunciated carefully." (Lee, 281) she even is willing to take a while to explain this to the class, but doesn't realize her own racism at home. This may be because of generations in her family over a long time in the south having racism towards blacks, and it just got passed down to her, just how normal things from families get passed down. She also may only realize the persecution in Germany, because everyone in the U.S notices the persecution and all agrees it is horrible. Although in places like Maycomb and in the south, persecution has always been there, growing around them- so it isn't at all obvious to her or others.
ReplyDeleteThis point is especially enforced when Ms. Gates says Germany's government is a dictatorship, but in America everyone is free of prejudice and is equal. "Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Pre-ju-dice she enunciated carefully." (Lee, 281) she even is willing to take a while to explain this to the class, but doesn't realize her own racism at home. This may be because of generations in her family over a long time in the south having racism towards blacks, and it just got passed down to her, just how normal things from families get passed down. She also may only realize the persecution in Germany, because everyone in the U.S notices the persecution and all agrees it is horrible. Although in places like Maycomb and in the south, persecution has always been there, growing around them- so it isn't at all obvious to her or others.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you because Ms.Gates doesn't even realize how racist and hypocritical she is. When she says, "Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice," she enunciated carefully. "There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and why Hitler doesn't think so is a mystery to me" (Lee 329). This shows that she doesn't even know what is happening in her own county because persecution of the innocent is going on.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Harper Lee is trying to show that Scout and Dill have not been influenced of racism by the people of Maycomb. Miss Gates along with Bob Ewell, Walter Cunningham, and many others have been spreading racism across Maycomb, and Scout and Dill don't succumb to their ways of thinking. In Chapter 15, Scout forces Walter Cunningham's mob to leave the jailhouse as they were about to hurt Tom Robinson, which shows her ability to see their wrong intentions, and Dill cries at the end of Chapter 19 when Mr. Gilmore says racist things to Tom Robinson, as he is unable to see how a man could be so racist and not get in trouble. Both Scout and Dill are too innocent to understand the racism of Maycomb, and Harper Lee furthers that innocence when Mrs. Gates was being racist and a hypocrite.
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