To Kill a Mockingbird Vs Parallel: Comparative essay

Everyone makes decisions. Everyone is put into situations where they have to choose one path and what happens next is unknown. In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee we can see the power of choices when the narrator (Scout Finch) tells the story of her father (Atticus Finch) and how his decision to defend a black man, who was charged with raping a white girl, affected him, his family and those around him. Similarly in ‘Parallel’ by Lauren Miller we see how Abby, the teenage protagonist’s life changes drastically as she makes different decisions in different situations that further leads her to a life she wouldn’t have expected. In both these text’s it is obvious that the decisions made, unravel many unknown consequences that we should be aware of.

A common theme that both these books primarily revolve around is the choice’s one makes. In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, Atticus Finch is repeatedly seen in a negative light for defending a black man in court. Not only was he disrespected by the neighbours who thought that “lawing for niggers” was a poor decision, but also by the kids in Scout’s school who ran around calling, “Scout Finch’s daddy defends niggers,” Besides that, even one of Atticus’s relatives called him a “nigger lover”. Nevertheless, Atticus was able to push through the insults since he was highly respected and honoured at the Negro church for his stand against racism. From this one decision Atticus made, many different opinions were created, leaving Atticus to settle the consequences.

In a similar manner, at one point in ‘Parallel’, Abby became a part of a huge fight with her best friend Caitlin in the cafeteria. Out of frustration, Abby told everyone that Caitlin had dated a married man, revealing a subject that Caitlin was very conscious about. Consequently Abby was in such a fluster that she, “a) lost her two best friends, b) failed her astronomy midterm and c) asked out a guy who was already dating someone else.” Repeatedly Abby asked herself, “How quickly can a person implode?” and the answer is simple. It just depends on the choices you make. The power of our choices is immense and we should be conscious of that.

It is quite clear that these two books share similar themes yet both authors use contrasting settings to highlight the theme. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is set in the 1960’s and primarily revolves around a family dealing with the consequences of segregation whereas ‘Parallel’ focuses on a teenage girl in the modern world and how her choices affect her. Both of these setting work well in order to express the theme yet in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ the setting choice seems slightly more effective. This may be because in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ they are dealing with much more mature issues that leave greater impacts on larger communities compared to a teenage girls problems, which usually are much smaller when looked at on a vast scale.

In conclusion, both of these books are able to explain how the choices we make lead to unrevealed consequences, yet ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ uses a more effective setting to convey this theme. After reading these two texts, the reader may believe that only negative results can be created through our choices but this is false. Positives results can also be created as long as the right decisions are made to lead up to those final results. This also doesn’t mean that every single small decision could cause a difference between life and death, but there is that possibility. This leaves the reader with the question of whether there is any way to know the consequences of our actions but that also is unknown.

By Aditi