Harper Lee wants to look at more than just one kind of prejudice in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. That's why she created the characters of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley.
The most obvious example of prejudice is the racism that boils up around the Tom Robinson case. Robinson, as a black man in the South, faces the same racial hatred that black people have had to endure there for hundreds of years. Sometimes this racism results in physical tragedy, even death, as with Robinson. But always it subjects the people involved (both the haters and the hated) to a diminished capacity to live their lives in a fully meaningful way.
With Boo Radley, we also see prejudice, but it is of a different nature. This is the prejudice that people engage in with their neighbors and other folks who aren't necessarily all that different from them. Boo Radley, and the other Radleys, were culturally similar to Scout's family and the rest of the white people of Maycomb County. But since they kept to themselves and lived in what seemed a peculiar way, they were subjected to unfounded speculation and character aspersions that were unjustified.
To Kill a Mockingbird doesn't ask readers to simply look at the cruel and unjust actions of others, which is all to easy to do; it also asks readers to consider their own potential unfair actions and judgments. Is there a Boo Radley in your neighborhood?
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