In the literary pieces To Kill a Mocking bird , An Enemy of the People, and Julius Caesar the authors use crowds to develop their themes. The townspeople, majority, and the mobs represented how people go in favor of the more popular side. Most people will go on this side because the benefits will go to the people. They can also fear that having a different opinion will make a bad impression of themselves. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the townspeople’s narrow-mindedness didn’t allow them to think like ” free-thinkers”.
They never went outside the boundaries of Maycomb County, which limited their nowledge to that which they already knew. The townspeople were all brought up under the same beliefs. Since the town is in the middle of nowhere, they receive no new ideas or information. All this is accountable for the narrow-mindedness of the town.. Harper Lee uses the townspeople to show how narrow-mindedness leads to uniform thinking. This way of thinking leads to the majority always going on the same side. Anyone with a different opinion cannot speak up because nobody else will support him.
All of the other people believe him wrong because they grew up thinking that their ways are correct. Thus, the ajority in To Kill a Mockingbird always beat the minority because the majority’s facts are based on ideas that everyone has. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen shows that Society listens selectively. The people only want to hear what will benefit them, not considering how everybody else affected by it. The people refused to hear the truth. They didn’t care about doing things for the good of the people. At first, everybody went with Dr. Stockmann.
There was hardly anybody who went against him. The n, the people found that they will have to pay for all the work done. That meant heavy taxation on the middle class, who simply couldn’t afford to ay for it. The people then only cared about their own money, not about the health of the visitors who would come. Inevitably, everybody switched sides. Ibsen uses the majority vs. the minority to show how in society people only want to hear what concerns them in any way. In An Enemy of the People, the people “did not dare” help him out by taking his side.
The majority believed him to be an enemy because they thought that he wanted them to be taxed! . Hence , An Enemy of the People shows that people do not dare fight against the majority fearing that they will be criticized. In Julius Caesar, people do (or join) things only for personal benefit. Many people are inconsiderate and grieve over their own losses; especially the loss of a great leader. Caesar. The crowd first went on the side of Brutus. He told them that they would be betraying their country if they didn’t join him.
Since they dare not do such a thing, they joined him. After Antony, showed them the great loss, and read Caesar’s will everybody switched sides. Shakespeare uses mobs to show people’s want of self benefit. Antony lead the people in by showing them how they lost something great, and how much they would gain from the will). They would not go for Brutus because they don’t care about the good of Rome as much as they did the good of the people. The crowd in all three novels went with the majority. At times, some feared that joining the minority would make them bad people.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, nobody wanted to introduce new ideas because everybody else will believe the other ideas are correct. This was caused by a lack of information. In An Enemy of the People, the public went against Dr. Stockmann for fear that they will be blamed for thinking wrongly. The People refused to hear the truth nd even to pay attention to the consequences of not fixing the Baths. Some people would join him, only they didn’t dare want to be seen with “an enemy of the people”. In Julius Caesar , they people were swayed.
When Brutus said to the people you must be a true Roman, he said it in such a way that nobody would want to go against him. Thus he gained the people’s vote. When Antony disproved most of Brutus’ comments, everybody changed sides. If the took the conspirators side, they would be considered bad because Antony contradicted everything Brutus said. In addition, the crowds also showed selfishness. In An Enemy of the People , the public was selfish and refused to pay more taxes. In Julius Caesar , The people were saddened by their own losses.
They also were happy about the moony from Caesar’s will. Thus these three literary pieces were similar in the use of! crowds. There are many changes that can be made. Society should not think selfishly, but about how problems should be fixed. They should think of solutions in terms of themselves AND especially how everyone else will be affected. In To Kill a Mockingbird , the town could start getting new ideas by communicating with the outer world. That way, the town would not be so narrow-minded.
In An Enemy of the People , they must let someone say what would happen later on if the baths are not fixed. The people in charge of the baths could also think of ways to get funds. In Julius Caesar , have the people find a different way to solve to problem besides war. These are improvements that could have prevent the majority/minority problem. In these three pieces, the crowd shows how different parts of society work.. Society is a selfish narrow mind group of people at times. There are many ways , though that this can improve.
