How does Harper Lee use minor characters in To Kill a Mockingbird to explore some of the main concerns in the novel?
Harper Lee uses minor characters in a variety of different ways to help explore and expose some of the main concerns brought up in the book, ranging from strict town morals, justice, all the way to racism and death due to racism. I have chosen to outline some of the ways in which Harper Lee uses three minor characters, Mayella Ewell, Heck Tate and Dolfus Raymond, to help emphasise and explore some of the major concerns in the book.
Mayella Ewell is the first minor character I shall discuss; a beacon of racial prejudice and the injustice of the courthouses. She is considered to be trash along with the rest of the Ewell's; despite the fact that she is one of the few Ewell's who can read and write.
As well as being literate she tries her best to make that most of what she's got, "the quote about the flowers she keeps". Despite her decency compared to the others in her family Mayella still only cares for her own wellbeing.
When she forces herself upon Tom Robinson, in a last ditch attempt to feel some affection from a man, she is soon to realise the error of her ways. As Atticus says,
"She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time honoured code of our society" by going after a black man she has broken 'the rules' of Maycomb and thus she tries to hide the truth by abusing Maycomb's harsh structure of injustice and racism. She is white and Tom is black meaning the court case, as she well knows, can only have one outcome. She would rather sentence a man...