Atticus menjelaskan kepada Jem ketidaktahuan masyarakat dalam mencari kebenaran. Ini adalah fakta "jelek" bahwa kehidupan orang-orang dan jalan masa depan telah diputuskan sejak manusia dilahirkan dalam warna kulit tertentu, yang menjelaskan baris terakhir dari puisi saya:Â
"Seseorang memiliki warna kulit yang lebih baik."
My creative response explores the theme of racial discrimination depicted in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a drawing of two boys of different ethnicities, accompanied by a short free-verse poem that discusses their contrasting lives due to their difference in skin colour. I focus my exploration on the setting of the novel, when citizens were ignorant upon civil rights and practiced segregation. Through my drawing and poem, I have understood, applied, and conveyed a clear interpretation and visualisation of this theme, which goes to show the overall success of my creative response.
In my drawing, the line across the boys' faces emphasises their differences and outlines a separation between the two sides of society. My drawing is a reflection of the poem, where I explain that there are three differences that are lowering "The other" (the black people) from the "One" (the white people): opportunity, dignity and freedom. The repetition in my poem recognises the absence of these aspects in the black boy's life.
I represent opportunity that the white boy possesses through the road, meaning he has a future. He is also wearing glasses to represent his intelligence and opportunity in the form of education. On the other hand, instead of a road or glasses, there is a fire behind the black boy to symbolise the future that had already been destroyed since the moment he was born. Fire was a fitting symbol, as it used to be common to burn black people's houses when segregation was introduced in the US. Further into the novel, Lee introduces Tom Robinson as a significant portrayal of the community's racist dominion. His trial reveals that a black man was in no position to feel "sorry" for a white woman because his low dignity (19.124-127). How people dress is commonly associated with dignity and social acceptance, therefore I portrayed the black boy in a dirty singlet and the white boy in a clean collared shirt. Lastly, I illustrate the novel's broader political aspect of civil rights and freedom through the black boy's chained neck, as a representation of his restricted freedom of speech.
"In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins" (23.38-40). Atticus's explains to Jem the ignorance of society in seeking truth. It is an "ugly" fact that people's lives and future paths have been decided from the moment people were born into a certain skin colour, which explains the last line of my poem: "Onehad the better skin colour."
