Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: Scout's Childhood Innocence and Growing Maturity

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.

Scout who lives in a male dominated society, soon embraces her identity. Her father, Atticus, and brother Jem, who both live with her impact Scout towards male dominance. Scout feels like she’s being pressured into being someone who she’s not. Later on, Scout soon struggles that wanting to be herself won't be enough and that she doesn’t have to prove to anyone that she’ll act differently towards others. Scout does many masculine activities that make her feel like who she wants to be makes her true identity who she really is.

The transition from innocence to experience is a major theme in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, The character of Scout, on particular, portrays this theme exceptionally well. At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent, good-hearted five-year-old child who has no experience with the evils of the world, as the novel progresses, Scout has her first contact with evil and she begins to mature. By the end of the novel her persperctive on people changed from that of a child to that of a grown-up.

In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the theme of innocence and growing up is central to the book. Lee conveys innocence as naïvety, as a narrow or restricted world view that expands as one grows older. Throughout the book, we see this theme develop alongside Scout, Jem, and Dill, who, as time goes on, transition from blindly accepting everything they experience from life in Maycomb, to being able to know what is right and wrong when they see it.

In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ written by Harper Lee, the author has used numerous different methods to portray the themes of innocence, maturity and growing up. These themes were put in so that the audience could become more empathetic towards the characters, especially the protagonists. She depicts these themes through characters, events, using symbolism, imagery and contrast located throughout the book.

Scout realizes through the book that Boo Radley is not the bad person he is made out to be. At the end of the story, Scout knows that Boo saved them and yes he’s a shy and withdrawn person, but the courage to protect the kids shows her his real side, In the novel Scout says, “Well, it’d sort of be like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it”(Lee 317)? Scout knows that Boo is a good person, but putting him into the limelight would destroy him because of his shyness. Scout’s outlook on society changes throughout the novel as she sees what happens and she notices the courage that people have and it shapes her into a more mature kid.

In Harper Lee’s historical fiction novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus shows the children that Maycomb is prejudice, teaches them courage, and the children show maturity. Scout and Jem are children of Atticus who's assigned to defend Tom Robinson is his case and throughout this case Scout’s summer neighbor and friend, Dill, Jem, Atticus, and Scout exuberate of these themes in their actions .Prejudice is when one pre-judges another based on their race, gender, age, or sexuality which one don’t understand and one hates the unknown of another. Courage is doing something without the fear of being judged or fearing the unknown. Maturity is learning lessons and applying them to oneself where one start to display adult characteristics. These

In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout matured throughout the book. Scout has dark brown hair, and she wears jean blue overalls. She likes to dress more like a boy rather than a six year old girl. Scout is also one of the main characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout lives with her dad Atticus Finch, her ten year old brother Jem, and their housekeeper Calpurnia. Not only is Scout a normal young girl, she can read and write. Scout’s full name is Jean Louise Scout Finch, but she just goes by Scout for short. Scout has changed throughout the course of the story by learning better manners, and becoming more fearless. Harper Lee included Scout in this book because it shows how one can mature over time. Scout is a very knowledgeable,

The adult world is a cold and terrifying place. There are robberies, shootings, murders, suicides, and much more. If you were to be a small child, perhaps age 5, and you were to look in at this world, you would never know how bad it actually was, just from a single glance. Children have a small slice of ignorant bliss, which helps to keep them away from the harsh of reality. It isn’t until later, when they encounter something that opens their eyes and shows them, that they truly start to understand the world we live it. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird shows the many differences between the simplicity of being a kid and the tough decisions and problems that adults must face every day.

“People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” Many people get interpreted and read differently than what they truly are on the inside because we don’t have the mindset to understand their way of looking at life. The fundamental and often universal idea shown throughout To Kill A Mockingbird is coming of age, which is depicted through many incidents that occur. In a world full of standards Jean Louise is the only one noticeable because she doesn’t blend in with the rest of the girls her age. She is very outgoing and adventurous which gives her the name of a tomboy. Just because she seems tough doesn’t make her cold hearted because on the inside she is

Scout was hit with reality when she was faced with Mrs. Dubose, a mean lady that lived right down the street, “[...]the business section of Maycomb drew us frequently up the street pass the real property of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose[...]. Previous minor encounters with her left me with no desire for more, but Jem said I had to grow up sometimes” (99). Growing up isn’t always a fun thing. You’re going to have to face reality and realize that not everything is always going to be easy and filled with hearts and flowers. Growing up is about having to face reality, no matter how scary, head on. You must gain knowledge based on the past and learn from it. Another disadvantage of growing up emotionally is realizing what you thought was bad, may be something normal that often happens every day. When Scout and Mr. Raymond were talking, Scout started to question why he would give out his secrets openly like that. He responded with, “‘Because you’re children and you can understand it” (201). He sees that children are innocent and they don’t know the harsh truth that lies upon them. For example, Dill was crying over the trial, believing that it was sick. He hasn’t yet to grow up, but Mr. Raymond tells Scout what Dill will face in the future, “‘Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being--not quite right[...]” (201). Growing up, you’re not

Growing up isn’t easy. Scout of all people showed us this, as she regularly tackled the mysteries and difficulties a young life has to offer, in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Being a young child, finding your own path and becoming mature seems nearly impossible. What you are told is what you believe. Fortunately for Scout, she had influences such as Atticus, Calpurnia, and Jem to push her in the right direction, thus helping her reach a level of maturity that not many children had the ability to achieve. Likewise, Scout also managed to acquire a broader understanding of all things, especially as her naive opinions and suspicions of people were proven wrong more and more often. A crucial part of this story was focussed mainly on the

In the three years covered by To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and Jem grow up. At the start of the book they are innocents, with an uncomplicated sense of what's good (Atticus, the people of Maycomb) and what's evil (Boo Radley). By the end of the book, the children have lost their innocence and gained a more complex understanding of the world, in which bad and good are present and visible in almost everyone. As the children grow into the adult world, though, they don't just accept what they see. They question what doesn't make sense to them—prejudice, hatred, and violence. So while To Kill a Mockingbird shows three children as they lose their innocence, it also uses their innocence to look freshly at the world of Maycomb and criticize its flaws.

In chapter 4 of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the children are playing a game based off of rumors they hear about the Radleys. They didn’t just make up these rumors themselves though, they hear them from adults. For example, “It was a melancholy little drama woven from bits and scraps of gossip and adult neighborhood legend.” (Lee 52). A perfect example of children echoing what their parents say could be, when a small child says a curse word or says something inappropriate. They obviously had to have heard it from somewhere and the people that small children are around the most are their parents. This goes to show that we should all be careful about what we say around children because you never know who it will go back to.

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.