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How Are Outsiders Central to ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Silas Marner’? This essay is a comparison of two novels written in different eras, which have similar themes. In my essay I will compare the outsiders in each novel, as they are central figures. An outsider is people that differ from the normal. To Kill A Mockingbird has three outsiders, but only two of them are real outsiders, them being Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Atticus Finch is the other outsider. However in Silas Marner there is only one main outsider and that being Silas Marner himself. The other outsider in Silas Marner is Eppie, the adopted daughter of Silas Marner. The author of To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee presents many ideas about why the three characters are outsiders. His main ideas are racism and prejudice as a whole. In the novel Silas Marner George Elliot represents ideas of different classes, for example rich versus poor. Both novels also represent the idea of people prejudging the outsiders without getting to know them. They don’t treat the outsiders right from the first time they meet them simply because they are different. Appearance is a focal point in both novels. The appearance of Tom Robinson is the main reason for him being an outsider. The novel is set in the early 1900’s and at that time most of Southern America was racially segregated, especially the southern states where this book is set. He is forced to live out of the local community along with the other coloured folks in the town. He also has a disability. That being that his left arm is several inches shorter than his right and this is very visual. ‘His left arm was fully 12 inches shorter than his right, and hung dead on his side. It ended in a small shrivelled hand, and from as far away as the balcony I could see that it was of no use to him.’ This quotation simply means that Tom has a disability and as we learn later on in the novel, this would make the accusation about him even harder to believe. With him having a disability he is similar to Silas Marner as he too has a disability. He suffers from epileptic fits. He is also similar to Boo with his physical appearance. Both men are hunched and pale in skin colour. Also Silas Marner is described as having dead mans eyes. ‘Silas Marners pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather their dreadful stare.’ A quote, which makes out that Silas isn’t something nice to look at. As both men had disabilities and were both outsiders having these disabilities didn’t help. But in Tom’s case his problem didn’t make him more of an outsider. However with Silas suffering from fits he became more of an outsider as his disability was a mental disability unlike Tom’s. ‘Boo was about six and a half feet tall, judging from his tracks he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch.’ Thus description is take from the novel and it basically describes his as obese in size and strange in his ways. This appearance made Boo appealing to the children in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird as he was strange to look at and this gave him an aura about him. In the two novels there are wrongful accusations. Tom and Silas were the victims of this. Tom Robinson is firstly accused of raping Mayella Ewell. He is taken to court because of this and is charge of being guilty. This wasn’t such a shock as he was black and at the time America was very racist towards blacks. So the courts were very biased towards the whites. His description shows that for Tom to rape someone is would be near impossible to do so. ‘In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always win.
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