Provincialism in To Kill a Mocking Bird Essay

Provincialism in To Kill a Mocking Bird Essay vincialism in ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ Provincialism is a confusing term because it can refer to different aspects of our life and there are a lot of provincialism definitions. What is the best way to define provincialism? Provincialism is usually defined as a narrowness of mind because of the lack of experience with cultures that are different from one’s own. A provincial person uses stereotypes and is usually opposed to other peoples and cultures because of lack of awareness and ignorance. The only way to correct this ignorance and eliminate hostility is to travel outside one’s local confines both literally and metaphorically. When people grow up in some specific environments and cultures, it is very difficult for them to see the diversity of the world around them, to grasp the meaning and understand the essence of the things. Such people can understand and accept only one side of any idea or concept, ignoring the fact that there can be more. They do not even try to see the details. Such narrow-mindedness can cause different problems in communication with other people of a different language, culture, race, religion, and very often, even age. Provincialism in a person’s behavior can be seen in the attitude to people from different social groups or can be revealed in total misunderstanding and absence of desire to interpret the different way of thinking. This approach can result in problems not only locally but on the international level as well. Provincialism can be found among characters of ‘To Kill the Mocking Bird’. The best example of a person that can be characterized using the word provincialism is Aunt Alexandra. She is too much proud of her family heritage. She is not concerned about the fact that one of the Finches who she simply admires is mentally unstable. Aunt Alexandra thinks that her family is a little better than other people in Maycomb County. She communicates and socializes only with those town residents who belong to the upper class. She thinks about other people, such as the Cunninghams) and treat them with contempt. Boo Radleys parents can also be described with the word provincialism to some extent. They were very religious and completely unsociable. They seldom socialized with their neighbors and restricted young Boo to stay within confines of their home. They wanted to prevent him from meeting people different from their type (the Cunninghams) who had a bad influence on him. In general, Maycomb residents did not trust people who were different from them and disliked their behavior. Miss Maudie was an old lady who was so fond of flowers and gardening and worked a lot to keep her garden in order. But the town thought she’d better spent more time inside, reading the Bible. Atticus was considered to the man that everyone in town was proud of but when de decided to defend a black man in the court, he suddenly lost all his dignity he had in their eyes. Maycomb people could not understand what made him do so and could not accept such behavior. The whole town thought that Atticus had gone mad when defending a black man. Because of racial prejudice they that thought that if a white man had something to do with a black man, he was a shame to the white community. The black community had its racial prejudice as well. When Calpurnia took Scout and Jem to the church of black people, they did not like it and said she did not have right to do so because that church was only for the black people. The black people in Maycomb did not want to let the white people in their world.