Comparison of Where The Crawdads Sing and To Kill a Mockingbird

24 Nov 2022

Keywords: Random, Thanksgiving Movie

This thanksgiving I watched the movie Where The Crawdads Sing with my family. As I was watching the suspenseful murder mystery, I had a suspicion that I made very well known to the 3 people around me that the book was very similar and related to To Kill a Mockingbird. I searched up if anybody else had drew the parallels and sure enough they had.

Regardless, here are all the parallels I could draw.

Setting

This is by far the most obvious. Where The Crawdads Sing and To Kill a Mockingbird were both set in the small, Southern towns during the 1960s. Both of them focus on the general idea of an outcast (more on this later) among a judgemental post-slavery society, albeit To Kill a Mockingbird’s much more defined focus on racism.

Similar Elements

Schooling

Both To Kill a Mockingbird and Where The Crawdads Sing depict on the impoverished conditions of American education. To Kill a Mockingbird shows Dill, a poor child attending school who cannot afford school lunch, and Where The Crawdads Sing depicts Kya being teased as a poor rat when walking into the public school barefoot. Both of them show the low education standards and high poverty present even among whites in the South at the time.

Racism

To Kill a Mockingbird is the most directly focused on racism and is even thought to be modeled after the Scottsboro’s trial case. Where the Crawdads Sing is less explicit but racism is clearly visible when the private inspectors call the African-American store owner, Jumpin, “boy” (derogatory term for African Americans during slavery era.)

Outsiders

Prejudice against “outsiders” from a judgemental town are at the essence of both stories. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the outsider is Boo Radley who is believed to be a ghost by the gossip of the town and Scout herself. In Where the Crawdads Sing, the same outlandish judgement is given to Kya, better known to the town as the mysterious “Marsh Girl.” While a trial for Radley is never conducted, it is discussed towards the end as something that would hurt him in the same way as would a trial of Chase’s rape of Kya.

Trial Case

This is by far the most obvious. Both To Kill a Mockingbird and Where the Crawdads Sing are stories of the trial which unreveal uglier realities. The only difference in this case is that Kya, the one on trial, was actually guilty and not charged compared to Tom Robinson.

Nature

For crying out loud, Where the Crawdads Sing and To Kill a Mockingbird both have birds in their names! Beyond that Where the Crawdads Sing is very focused on the deep interest of Kya in the nature and the world around her. To Kill a Mockingbird also has similar attention to nature with the bird imagery of “Finch” (an actual bird) all being birds, and the overall concept of birds not doing anything harmful in this world.

Which one is better?

I’m not in a position to judge but To Kill a Mockingbird definitely seems better. Perhaps because I spent half a semester reading it and not a night watching it.