In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout grows up in a small town where nothing normally happens. When her dad is given a case to defend a black man, she gets thrown into a world where racism has been the norm. She hasn’t been exposed to something like this, so she is confused, but she grows more mature in that time. She and Jem both come of age in different ways in the story and get a taste of the real world. Scout and Jem both show maturation throughout the book. Their father’s decision to defend a black man opens them up to the harsh world of racism and prejudice, meanwhile he shows them how to be compassionate to people and not to follow the norm. The reason To Kill A Mockingbird is a great coming-of-age story is that it lifts Scout and Jem out of the racist society norms and asks them to be more and model their father’s behavior. Even though racism is a big problem of our world today, it was a bigger problem when Jem and Scout were children.
Scout is considered an unknowing kid by many people until she models her father’s behavior and advice he gives her. “You never really understand a
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“Books tell children what to expect, what life is, what culture is, how we are expected to behave--what the spectrum is. Books don’t just cater to tastes. They form tastes. They create norms…” P. 4. Books nowadays have taken teenagers to a different level entirely. Books like the Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Maze Runner have a dystopian theme to them where kids are thrown into a different world from their childhood. They create norms for the real world for the teenagers because we have been sucked into this new world. For us, this gives us a different intellect on what we think is right. As readers we look for a character that we can relate to. If we can do that, but it gives us a different perspective we may not want, then the books are giving us a norm that may not be healthy for
In the story, Lee shows how Scout is perceiving a different point of view: “I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle”(320). Seeing differences through other people’s perspectives is greatly needed to grow up. Scout had finally “stepped” into Boo’s shoes and had seen everything from Boo’s point of view. Scout points out that she is acting on the impression of Mr. Raymond: “Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too”(Lee 229). Scout realized from what Mr. Raymond and Atticus had told her that black folks get everything worse than white folks. Coming-of-age requires seeing problems through different
As people grow in life, they mature and change. In the novel , To Kill a Mockingbird ,by Harper Lee, Scout, the main character, matures as the book continues. Slowly but surely, Scout learns to control her explosive temper, to refrain from fistfights, and to respect Calpurnia, their maid, and to really learn her value to the family. Scout simply changes because she matures, and she also changes because Atticus, her father, asks her to.
Throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, many characters develop and mature in unique ways. Boo, who fears talking to others, Aunt Alexandra, who is against people of other races or social classes, and Scout, who is young and is not aware of life’s challenges, constantly suppress their emotions and personality. Their life choices and decisions that they make throughout the book, lead them to be more accepting of others and less prejudice. As the book progresses, Boo, Aunt Alexandra, and Scout learn life lessons and develop into mature adults.
There is a time in everyone’s life when they reach a certain age where they go through a period where they come of age. To come of age means that a person reaches an age when they discover something they didn’t know before and they learn it when they come across something significant. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, author Harper Lee uses the theme of coming of age with her character Jem Finch. Throughout his coming of age experience Jem encounters the tree, the gun, and the camellias which teach him some important lessons that he will benefit from in the future.
As people get older they go through experiences in their life that can change them in bad ways or most of the time change them in good ways.This good change occurs usually by the experiences teaching them important lessons they should know in life.These changes are very important in ones life because it matures them into an adult. This transformation happens to certain characters in every novel and it is called coming of age. In the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, both Jem and Scout go through this coming of age and learn what it means to be courageous, the unfairness of the world, and to look at other people's perspective before judging them.
Coming of age is an influential part of many people’s lives. They begin to leave behind their innocent childhood views and develop a more realistic view on the world around them as they step forward into adulthood. (Need to add transition) Many authors have a coming of age theme in their books; specifically, Harper Lee portrays a coming of age theme in his book To Kill A Mockingbird. Through the journeys of their childhoods, Jem and Scout lose their innocence while experiencing their coming of age moment, making them realize how unfair Maycomb really is.
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." A quote by Atticus Finch a loving single father of two children in a novel by Harper Lee. The story takes place during the 1930s and the Great Depression, in a small (made-up) town called Maycomb Alabama. Scout now an adult is narrating what she experienced and felt in ages 6-9. She gives details of her family, school, and just everything she goes through. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, she also talks about her brother Jem, who starts as a careless young boy that slowly starts getting more mature. Jem changing throughout the story helps show a little bit more of how the story develops and why character development is important in making a good novel.
Harper Lee, in the realistic-fiction novel To Kill A Mockingbird, uses a variety of literary elements to aid in the overall development of the theme. All of the characters are going through some sort of coming of age experience or enhancing someone else's experience as well as their lives all the while being greatly impacted by the racial discrimination and injustices that occurred all around them. An event in the novel that expresses this is the court case of Tom Robinson, or more specifically, Atticus’s, Tom Robinson’s attorney, closing argument. During this Tom Robinson is wrongly accused of raping a white girl in their town of Maycomb, and Atticus decides to defend him as his attorney despite the town's clear racial biases and preconceived stereotypes on people of color; this greatly impacts Atticus’s daughter, Scout. To show this Harper Lee uses setting, plot and conflict to enhance the development of the novel and put forth the theme. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee uses these literary elements, plot, conflict and setting to develop the idea that the presence of racial inequality leading to the undermining of justice impacts the coming of age for Scout on a variety of levels.
In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Scout is an example of a character whose coming-of-age process involves gaining a different perspective. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout states to herself “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough” (Lee 374). At the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus teaches Jem and Scout about stepping in others shoes. Scout does not fully understand what Atticus had meant when he said that until the very end of To Kill a Mockingbird. When she stands on Boo Radley’s front porch and sees everything from the view of the window that Boo has been looking out of throughout the entire novel she finally realizes what Atticus had meant all of those years. She then finally fully understands what it means to truly stand in someone else's shoes. After she has this realization she feels much older and wiser because she has gained a new perspective that most of Maycomb County has not acquired. She has gained the perspective of understanding, and having the ability to see things through others perspectives. A large part of Scout’s coming-of-age process occurs when she sees things from Boo’s perspective. Another moment of that shows Scout coming-of-age happens
The passages i have chose today for my coming of age essay was the court scene and the problems after the court scene because there were multiple parts in those 2 scenes where the kids could have possibly observed some experience for coming of age and i will explain every single detail and every little piece of information to show you how and what they observed to coming of age in the future.
In books, many characters go through moral development. The book To Kill A Mockingbird shows many examples of characters that go through this development and characters that help others develop. While there are many different characters in the book, the focus is on the development of Jem and Scout Finch with the help of Atticus and Calpurnia. The kids are introduced when they are young and over the span of the book, the adults teach and help them, making them have a different understanding of the world only two years later. With the guidance of Atticus and Cal, Jem and Scout go through a big moral change.
To Kill a Mockingbird has a ”coming of age” theme set to it through everything that the protagonists experienced. The events in both the book and movie impacted the characters in both fortunate and unfortunate ways, which made them mature. The youngest protagonists were the ones who mainly experienced this, for the older characters already went through their Coming of Age. Jem had the most Coming of Age experiences in the whole story since he was on the borderline of becoming a teenager and taking on more serious responsibilities. Jem had to take responsibility and take care of his sister when while his father took Calpurnia home.
The essential question “how does where we grow up affect how we grow up?” is bold in To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee’s answer to it is empathetic yet brutal. Her answer is both astonishing and respectable. To Kill a Mockingbird, a 20th-century novel written by Harper Lee, executes racism, injustice, and stereotypical views. It is put into a position where whites are superior than any other religion along with different skin colors.
The way and rate that people mature at can be directly attributed to the values and beliefs of the society that surrounds an individual. It is undeniable that society’s perspective on many controversial issues will generally be adopted by the younger generations in a given society. Moreover, the exposure to significant events, coupled with the major influence of family members, can have an enormous impact on how an individual matures. Additionally, family members greatly help each other develop into moral adults by instilling in each other values that will ultimately determine an individual’s character. In Harper Lee’s timeless classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, the constant reiteration of Atticus Finch’s values, in
In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird there are many scenes which feature Scout and Jem “coming of age” one such scene is in the trial of Tom Robinson scene, in which Jem and Scout learn what the real, prejudiced world is really like. In the Tom Robinson court case scene, Lee does a masterful job of illustrating the “growing up” of Jem and Scout. Throughout the several chapters in which the trial takes place, Lee highlights the children’s experiences growing up and learning about the prejudice and overall racism of the american, white South.