Examples Of Character Development In To Kill A Mockingbird

Dubose said earlier about Atticus. Scout tells us that, gHe did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his kneech (103). This quote shows that Jem was feeling very hurt by what Mrs. Dubose had said about his father. To Jem, Atticus seems feeble and old, so, when threatened, Jem feels it is his responsibility to protect him. In the book, when Mrs. Dubose talks about Atticus, Jem just ignores her and walks away, but finally he decides to get revenge. He does this by, glittering the ground with green buds and leaves.h Jem tries to hurt something Mrs. Dubose loves like she attacked Atticus. Mrs. Dubosefs harsh words make Jem feel that it is his job to defend Atticus.

Jem learns from visiting Mrs. Dubose that not everything is how it seems at first glance. He also learns the value of courage and how it will later affect him as he matures into an adult. From what is described, the readers can draw a conclusion that Mrs. Dubose is impolite and bitter towards the children and is not afraid to speak her thoughts about Atticus defending Tom Robinson. As a result, Jem carries out his anger by destroying her flowers. He is later punished by Atticus by having to read to Mrs. Dubose certain days of the week for a period of time and work on her flowers. Through this process Jem is able to control his impulses and show kindness to those around him even if he does necessarily want to. This shows that Jem is becoming more of a young adult rather than a child. He also realizes that Mrs. Dubose is actually a woman of

Atticus’s son, Jem, finds trouble with Mrs. Dubose; this caused a change in her character. Jem becomes angry with Mrs. Dubose because of her comments about Atticus to him and Scout; out of anger Jem “cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves” (103). When Atticus became aware of Jem’s actions he sent him down the street to apologize to Mrs. Dubose for what he had done. As a punishment, Mrs. Dubose asked that Jem to come to her home and read to her every day for a month. As asked Jem did bringing Scout along each day. After a month had went by Jem was asked to continue coming to read to her. Jem was not a fan of the idea but he did not want to disappoint Atticus so he did as he told him. Later, after Mrs. Dubose passes away, Jem is informed of why the reading was important to Mrs. Dubose. She had a morphine addiction and reading to her was helping her to break her habit. Jem

Jem refuses to admit it, but he is terrified of Boo and the horror stories that lurk around him. When Dill challenges him to knock on the doors of the Radley Place, he unsurprisingly follows through because “he loved his honor more than his head” (13). The importance of preserving his reputation and pride overpowers his fear. After the incident, Jem becomes more assertive and constantly boasts about his accomplished feat; he believes that it was an act of bravery, conquering something that no one else dared to do. Dill incessantly tests Jem’s willingness to take on new risks and the Boo Radley Game is invented. The children mock Boo in front of the entire town on a daily basis, and Jem believes he is proving a point by doing a harmless, comical thing. Atticus catches them in the action, yet “[he] hasn’t said [they] couldn’t, therefore [they] could...Jem had thought of a way around it” (41). Like most kids, Jem is brutally honest and goes off of what he hears and what is in plain sight. His doings are prompted by the innocence he still has as well as his lack of exposure to the darker sides of the world. He is unable to make higher-level connections or construct advanced ideas about his environment yet, showing that he is no more mature than the next child.

Lawrence Kohlberg, a professor at Harvard, creates a theory of human moral development. Since his theory was an expansion of Jean Piaget moral development of children, he elucidates of his theory to have series of stages. Each stage were categorized into three levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. During each level there are 2 stages which are consequent for moral development because they are action that manifest on who we are.

When many people are children, their parents, grandparents, or anyone who poses as a parental figure tell them that they will become more mature with age. However, psychological maturity is mainly learned rather than simply accompanying a person’s ascent into adulthood. Inevitably people grow, but this statement proves the experiences a person has in their life, whether good or bad, will change the path he or she takes while growing up or even continuing his or her adult life. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jean-Louise “Scout” and Jem Finch are six and ten in the beginning of the book, respectively. Although they gain only three years by the end of the novel, the children develop even more mature mindsets than many of the physically grown-up people in the town. Three events that prompt this early maturation are a conversation that takes place between Atticus and Scout, Tom Robinson’s death, and the ordeal with Mrs. Dubose.

Jem had changed throughout the story from acting like a child and doing things that children do to becoming more mature and taking part in the

Imagine you are a lawyer tasked with an impossible case, and everybody in your community is against you, but still there is a shred of hope you cling to. What might that be you ask? That to which you cling are your morals. In To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus Finch had been given the Tom Robinson case, where a black man was convicted of raping a white woman. As a single father of two children, he continues to reinforce his values throughout the trial and during his daunting task of raising his children. In To Kill A Mockingbird what Harper Lee suggests about the nature of morals is that you should try to stand up for what you believe in even if people oppose or reject your ideals. Even when faced with an insurmountable opposition you should stand up for your morals because in the end if your don't follow your beliefs you are just contributing to the problem. We should try to create a voice for what we believe in and impress that upon the next generation so they can continue to exercise their beliefs to make the world a better place.

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist and educator known for his theory of moral development. He was a professor at Harvard University before he was a developmental psychologist. He later moved into the field of moral education. Jean Piaget (Swiss psychologist), John Dewey (American philosopher), and James Mark Baldwin (American philosopher and psychologist) all influenced Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, though Piaget 's work heavily influenced Kohlberg’s. Kohlberg ran tests to prove his theory.He tested 72 boys from middle and lower class families who were either 10, 13 or 16. Later in his research, he tested both boys and girls from different states and countries other than Chicago. Kohlberg found

Throughout the novel, Jem is influenced by a variety of people and circumstances. His surroundings and the people that he grew up with influenced his outlook on life and persuaded him into a well developed young man. First and foremost, his father Atticus established morals, and guidelines and consequently lead him into adulthood. He provided wisdom and insight into a future for Jem, free from inequality and abundant in fairness. Mrs. Dubose, although biased and cruel, was a figure of courage for Jem to learn from. Throughout the case, Jem was constantly reiterating his opinion on how he believed none of it was right. At the end of the novel, Jem was put in the worst situation at such a young age, almost being murdered. Luckily, the outcome

“Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.” -Bo Bennett

Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his theory of moral development developed in 1958. His theory was dependent on the thinking of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and American philosopher John Dewey. It consists of three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. These levels are based on the degree to which an individual accommodates to the conventional standards of society. Each level aquires two stages that serve as different standards of sophistication in moral reasoning. Overall, Kohlberg affirms that moral development is a process of maturing that emerges from thinking about about moral issues (“Kohlberg’s Moral Development”).

A moral: “To be concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour, and the goodness or badness of a character”. Harper Lee’s, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, evidently shows the importance of morals, and how Jem and Scout's development is affected and modified as the plot unfolds. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, there are multiple debatable morals induced by Jem and Scout, and both their ways of being. Scout was able to progress throughout the plot, exceeding herself along the way. Jem as well had an increase of growth as the novel developed.

In the book to To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a young girl is being put through a variety of challenges that have set her up to learn about aspects of life. Scout, the young girl is being put through situations throughout the book, and is going through different moral developments that have been set up into three levels by Kohlberg, a psychologist. Kohlberg gathered this information by giving people of different ages, different questions that would identify their moral stage (“Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development”). For example, some of the questions would be; if you were trapped in a room full of innocent people and someone dying would be the only way to save everyone else in the room would you risk yourself? On that

In Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Mayella Ewell, a young woman as well as the daughter of Bob Ewell, lives a life of insolence and isolation in the town of Maycomb. As a Ewell, which they are familiarized as being vulgar, uneducated, and indigent, Mayella is disrespected by the people of Maycomb as well as by her father. During the court case, Atticus shows courtesy towards Mayella by addressing her as a miss and a ma’am, which is not surprising for his values of equality. Mistaking his manners with sarcasm, she replies with, “Won’t answer a word you say as long as you keep mockin’ me” (pg.181). Harper Lee is demonstrating the amount of disregard Mayella faces in her life, so much that courtesy can’t be identified as just that. Mayella finds that Atticus is ridiculing her for what she doesn’t have, respect from others. With a reputation such as Mayella’s, people treat her like an outcast. Her lonely life can be a reason to explain why she always asked for Tom Robinson’s company, she wanted to experience friendship and perhaps love for the first time. Her loneliness was so clear to see, even Scout, who still has their childhood-innocent mind, can see through it. Scout compares Mr.Dolphus Raymond’s “mixed children” to Mayella because they both don’t know where to stand in their social class, “white people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her