Racial Ambivalence in To Kill a Mockingbird

Abstract

This research work is an analytical inquiry to the novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee to explore the presentation of ambivalent relationship between the whites and the blacks in American society, i.e. a continual fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. In other words, it refers to a simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or action. Atticus, the main character of the novel is in such situation, mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the racial ambivalence between black and white. Hence his identity reflects the racial ambivalence because the black subject is never simply and completely opposed to the white. Rather than assuming that some black subjects are ‘complicit’ and some ‘resistant’, ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relation within the racial subject.