A World Of Inescapable Power

Harper Lee is a successful female writer in the United States and she won thePulitzer Prize in1942. She is famous for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird which is alsothe only novel she published through her lifetime. She pays much attention to theaspects of the racial discrimination, the social hierarchy and the evil side of humannature.From the perspective of power，with Foucault’s other theories，like the theory ofdiscourse, the theory of heterotopias and the theory of panopticism, this thesis intends toanalyze this novel and show that the world it depicts is a world of inescapable power.This thesis consists of five parts. The first chapter gives a brief statement of HarperLee’s life and her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as an introduction to MichelFoucault and his main theories. There’s also a literature review which clarifies theresearch abroad and the domestic research about this novel. The second chapterdiscusses how power is reflected in discourse, mainly from the aspects of the whitemen’s discourse of power and the male discourse of power, as well as the livingsituation of the blacks and females under the discourse of power. The third chapterdiscusses how power is reflected in heterotopias, mainly from the relationships betweenpeople in heterotopias. The fourth chapter discusses how power is reflected in thesociety under the panoptical mechanism in the American South. Based on all theseanalyses this thesis concludes that the world reflected in this novel is a world ofinescapable power. Power exists not only between the whites and the blacks, but alsobetween males and females. Everyone in this world is in a net of power.