Racial Ambivalence in To Kill a Mockingbird
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Central Department of English
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.