The setting of To Kill a Mockingbird, Maycomb, contained many traditional stereotypical beliefs, which resulted in prejudice among the citizens, leading to the potential theme of how a society shapes an individual’s prejudice.

The setting of this book is Maycomb, which is a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business and backgrounds, which leads mostly to endless gossip and rumors. But most importantly, the setting makes the community extremely intimate with commonly acknowledged beliefs and norms, such as how people view black people and women.

According to Atticus on page 424, “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins.” Harper Lee used Atticus’ words to convey this inherent stereotype among the people in Maycomb of inequality and unfairness. He suggests that when people have to make a decision like Tom’s jury did, they will always follow their worst instincts and behave in a prejudiced and racist ways. This behavior is caused by the traditional norm of the society that black men are inferior and are always wrong. The Maycomb society shaped all the citizens with this belief and caused all the simultaneous racist actions. Moreover, Atticus also suggested that individuals, the juries in this case, would often choose to follow the mainstream and the society’s conformity when they are making a decision in front of everyone. In this case, if they truly believe, or that the black man is truly guilty, they would still accuse him only because of the norm of this society, making the decision based on his skin color. This is because if they don’t, people in Maycomb would blame and criticize them for supporting a black man, just like how people did to Atticus when he became Tom Robinson’s lawyer. So, when teetering between justice and social conformity, the juries chose the latter due to the setting.

In addition, on page 424, “Atticus said that Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a woman” and that it is “to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom’s. Besides” When Atticus points out that it might not be a bad thing that women can’t serve on juries, it suggests that even Atticus may harbor some sexist sentiments, and not even he is an entirely flawless and justicial person. This is also how the setting influenced the character --what growing in the Maycomb society brought to him involuntarily.

The norms and stereotypes in the setting of Maycomb leads to the potential theme of the whole book about how societies influence individuals to follow the mainstream beliefs.

Moreover, according to page 463, “Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” Mr. Underwood’s article situates Tom as a mockingbird in Atticus’s words. Tom never did anything but help others and go through the world kindly and compassionately, like a mockingbird. However, he was accused to the jail innocently only due to his skin color and the society’s bias toward black people. Tom didn’t deserve to die, as he brought nothing but good to the world. This links back to what Atticus previously mentioned about not to kill any mockingbird, which is the theme of the whole book that people shouldn’t kill any innocent people.

In page 462, it says that “To Maycomb, Tom’s death was Typical. Typical of a n***** to cut and run. Typical of a n*****’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.” Tom tried to escaped from the jail since he probably didn’t see any other avenue to escape from his horrible and unfair situation in the jail and was broken mentally, but he ended up being killed. The reason why he tried to escape is discernible. However, people were disinterested with his death and stereotypically believe Tom revealed his true color as a black man when escaping, emphasizing the common prejudice and racism among the Maycomb citizens. This quote furthermore shows the main conflict of racism in the book, where people view all black people with the same inferior traits. This unfair prejudice represents how the citizens mentally killed Tom Robinson by their racism, leading to his hopelessness. In this case, Tom was not only killed by escaping, he is also mentally killed by racism of the rest of the Maycomb society.

These quotes reflect the theme of “killing a mockingbird” and conveys the theme how people shouldn’t contain stereotypical beliefs toward others, and should treat every individual equally and independently, no matter their skin color.