Loss of Innocence in Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a...

Recently, I have read both a Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a Mockingbird, both considered literary classics. They share a number of similar themes and character that face similar situations. Ultimately, they have extremely different plots, but address the same issues; some that were common around the time they were published, and some that carry relevance into current times. What I wish to bring to light in this essay is that in both novels, there are many characters that lives’ hit a shatter-point in the course of the story. This shatter-point is where the characters’ lives are irrevocably changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. What I’m going to explore is how these characters cope with the emotional fallout of†¦show more content†¦Back in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the Confederate States’ slave population, the newly freed slaves fled North in hope of better treatment. The experience they received wa s barely better than being enslaved; also it was frequently worse as it was a struggle to secure the basic needs of life, practically survival, rather than living life. For a time immediately following the Civil War, the African-Americans and White Americans enjoyed a period of relative equally as every Confederate supporter was barred from running for any government post and civil jobs; an African-American could fill these jobs that mostly every White Southerner was barred from having, so some of the Southern States had African-American representatives to Congress. This didn’t last as the law that barred the â€Å"Southern Sympathizers† from holding those jobs was stricken down and all African-Americans that held such jobs were force out of office. Most freed African-Americans had to resort to sharecropping to get by and were in the poorest class of Americans in the late 19th and 20th centuries, along with immigrants that arrived from Europe and Asia. Simply put, the majority of Americans were White Americans and wanted nothing to do with Africans, Asians or even Europeans, though many of them had ancestors from Europe and were descended from them thusly. Thus the majority began to suppress the minorities, it was very much out of sight, out of mind policy.