Background

The whole main idea behind the story is what the mockingbirds come to represent. Which is the idea of innocence being stained by evil. People like Boo Radley, Jem, and others can be described as the mockingbirds. The story takes place in Maycomb county Alabama, in the 1930's. It occurred in the years of The Great Depression, where the economy was in a terrible state and the Jim Crow laws put limitations on the rights of blacks, mexicans, etc. These laws are in the center of some of the racism in the book, however people had started to make civil rights movements against these laws. History repeated itself in the time of the Holocaust and Hitler, which was a similar event in that the jews were mistreated just as blacks were in the story.