Similarities Between Atticus And Martin Luther King Jr

741 Words3 Pages
Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s incredible story To Kill A Mockingbird and real world civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Junior are very similar, but they do have their differences. Atticus as well as Dr. King fight for equality and justice among the people they live with and everywhere else for that matter. However, unlike Atticus, Dr. King goes out of his way and career to establish freedom and equality for everyone. So do you really know these two people, fictional and real alike? Equality; what does it mean to Atticus Finch and to Dr. King? In Atticus’s closing remarks defending Tom Robinson he says, “She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. ” In the time period that Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird blacks were oppressed, looked down upon, and treated as they are in her book displayed with Tom Robinson. This was also the time when Dr. King was using peaceful protest to help promote blacks’ rights and how they were looked upon on society. Dr. King furthers this topic by saying in his I Have A Dream speech, “And some of you have come from areas where your quest - - quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police…show more content…
This includes Dr. King and Atticus. As you know, they both fight for equality and justice, but how they do this is what separates them. Atticus Finch does it because, “…every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess.” This means he would most likely not actively fight for a black person if they were not a case of his. Dr. King is the opposite, however. He was a Baptist minster, but most of his time was devoted to his protests and civil rights movements. Dr. King shows how devoted he is to the cause while Atticus just helps due to his
Open Document