History Finds a Way to Make Everything Worse

"Although Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward." (174)

Here, Scout is telling us about how the town is laid out socially and a little bit of the back story behind why Maycomb is the way that it is. To summarize this section of the reading, the town is very small due to the fact that after they were reabsorbed into the union via the Reconstruction rule, they became even more secluded from other areas. This caused a very close society within the walls of Maycomb, but they were nervous about outsiders and change caused by the outside world (as were many small communities with the same issue).

Towns at this time were usually dominated by whites. This is very dangerous, because if you put a bunch of people who have the same strong opinions into a room, they will form stronger versions of those opinions once they get riled up and excited about things. For instance, if you put eight people from the same fandom into a room, they will get more excited about their fandom as time passes. The amount of excitement will grow exponentially when you put more people in the room.

This fandom scenario not only applies to Doctor Who, but racism as well. That is basically what has happened in Maycomb. Their thoughts have been fermenting and growing stronger, which leads to the general oppression of blacks and women (which sucks). The Reconstruction rule, while good in writing, did not always have a good impact on the way that southern whites thought of blacks. It actually lit a fire that led to them being the same amount or (in my opinion) even more racist (I only say this because there was no need for the Jim Crow laws, and whites created them just to keep blacks further down in society).

Sadly, this putting down of blacks happens throughout all of To Kill A Mocking Bird, and creates a hostile society for most of the people living there. There are a very small amount of people willing to publicly defend blacks at this time, and those people in the book and in history should be applauded along with the people who are the victims of oppression that have to go through this for their entire lives (no matter what kind of oppression they are going through, be it racism, sexism, or just general undeserved judgement).