Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, follows Jean Louise (Scout) Finch in her hometown of Maycomb and shows the trials and tribulations that come from living in a small town. Throughout the novel, Scout starts school, makes new friends and enemies, Maycomb is shocked by a girl's rape allegations, and the mystery of Boo Radley haunts the children of Maycomb a common theme is found throughout the novel, showing the reader the racial and class prejudice, distrust, and suspicion that hovers over the town set in 1930s Alabama. Some aspects of the novel that relate to this are the case by Tom Robinson, into the way the school system works in Maycomb and the mystery of Boo Radley for the community's youngest. An important part of To Kill A Mockingbird is the arrest and trial of Tom Robinson, a man accused of raping Mayella Ewell had hit and choked her before raping her, something he could never do with a badly damaged arm. This plot event was very important as Tom Robinson was found guilty, not because he actually was, but because of his race. He was black and Mayella wasn't, so the jury decided he was guilty even though there was no way he could have hurt Mayella the way she was hurt. This event shows the racism that occurred in 1930's Alabama and how decisions were made in favor of those who were white. Scout sees this, knowing it with Tom Robinson's useless arm and realizes that the sentence against Tom Robinson was not fair at all. Ultimately the price paid was Tom Robinson's death in prison, leaving his wife and children alone and without any source of income. W...... middle of paper ......on, the Cunninghams and Boo Radley were all major focuses of the novel in their own way and each caused their own form of tension between the main characters or the entire city ​​and county. A certain price is paid by multiple characters in all of these examples where the price was Miss Caroline's emotional distress resulting from the alienation of her students to the price Tom Robinson paid for his unfortunate death in prison. Overall, To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that was composed with one idea in mind and followed it to the end. The sources of tension found in the novel, from race to snobbery, often overlapped and created a set of real events in which one event caused the next to occur. The tension sources chosen also worked well for the time the novel was set in and all gave a good example of what it would have been like to live in a similar time..