As Miss Gates is going the Current Event section
most people didn’t know what it was until Cecil brought up an offensive topic
about “Old Hitler” known as Adolf Hitler. Ironically, Miss Gates is teaching
about how Hitler would “prosecute Jews” even though according to her, they “don’t
that over here”(281). “Democracy” as scout says is “equal rights for all,
special privileges for none” (281) but Miss Gates agree and says it’s the difference
between America and Germany recognizing that Hitler prosecuted Jews because of
their race/religion, being empathetically sorry about the whole situation. It
is clear that Miss Gates dislikes Hitler because of the way he prosecuted the
Jews but blind to the fact that they are doing the same thing to the blacks aka
Tom Robinson. As Harper Lee is showing Maycomb ignorance throughout the book
she included this passage to make it even clearer of how Maycomb is careless to
the fact that the blacks are being treated like trash. She also shows how
sometimes Miss Gates/Maycomb can be bias on with their choice of words and
decisions. There wasn’t an impact on Scout at the moment when Miss Gates
explains Hitler until when Jem explodes and expresses his feelings being upset
about what she said. “How can you hate
Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folk right at home,” (283)
Jem says, as I agree with the fact she is showing being bias and ignoring the
fact they are wrong for what they are doing.
Do you think Jem will confront Miss Gates about it? Will
it make a difference if he does confront her or not in Maycomb? Also, in anyway
do you think Maycomb opinion on the black community change or not?
Miss Gates is Scouts 3rd grade teacher and for current events she begins discussing about what is now known as world war II and during the time of the book it was a current event. The connection here is the Jews are in an extraordinarily bad situation where they are being killed and put in concentration camps because they are jewish, and blacks are going to jail and being lynched because they are black. Also in the past the Jews have been kicked out of their land and abused and earlier the blacks were abused and put into slavery. This is how jews and black people are connected and it is unfortunately in a way they are treated extremely unfair and unjust. Now it's time for Maycomb to open their eyes to this matter and change they way they act.
ReplyDeleteIf Maycomb opens their eyes to this matter and begin to treat blacks as equals who will be the main reason for this? If so why?
In response to Josh's post question, I think that Jem confronting Miss Gates about her Hitler discussion at school will be too much for the book. What I mean by this is that Harper Lee has already opened up so many ideas, that with any more, the novel will not be concluded with complete clarification. At this point in the book, Harper Lee is trying to wrap up these main ideas, not open new ones. Although the Hitler topic is a new point that is most likely not going to be touched upon in the rest of the book, it does have great symbolization as Josh pointed out. Harper Lee makes Miss Gates contradict herself in a way, because she says that Hitler persecutes the Jews, and using the symbolism, Hitler is the white people of Maycomb, and the Jews are the black people of Maycomb. She says, 'Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody' (329), yet if she steps outside her house and into the Maycomb world, blacks are being persecuted by whites right and left.
ReplyDeleteDo you think there is more symbolism for the Hitler idea? If so, what?