Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a critically acclaimed coming of age novel, focuses on the life of Jean Louise (Scout) Finch and a sleepy town called Maycomb. Lee uses the book to explore multiple themes involving racism and coming of age. After a pivotal moment with Cecil Jacobs Scout undergoes a clear psychological change where she discovers that the world isn’t a perfect place where everyone is treated equally, the theme of the book. A pivotal moment in the novel takes place in Chapter nine. After a fight with Cecil Jacobs Scout asks Atticus why Cecil called him a nigger lover. Atticus explains how he is “simply defending a Negro”(Lee 77). Atticus later explains why he is doing this and Scout’s eyes begin to open to the fact that people are looked at differently and it isn’t fair. After all her father was being made fun of for simply defending a Negro. Imagine the treatment actual Negroes get. …show more content…
During the opening chapters of the book Scout is carefree and outgoing ignorant of the social barriers society has created. Over one summer Scout, Jem and Dill even make a Boo Radley game that they polish and perfect adding “dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small play upon which we rang changes every day”(Lee 40). Scout is innocent and sees nothing wrong with playing a game that makes fun of someone and could easily offend them. However, after the trial Scout sees the error of her ways as she “felt a twinge of remorse, when passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley”(Lee 245). Consequently the actions taken in the trial and the views shown have caused Scout to see the true nature of the world and the problems with making fun of people you know nothing about despite what everyone else
During this time, Scout was able to see how unfairly some people were treated. She was able to see how a white persons word almost always was greater than a black persons word. I think being able to sit through the trial; Scout was able to see how racists some people were acting and how some adults were acting. Scout learns to deal with others and that some things aren’t always going to go the way she intends. Scout was always taught from her father, Atticus, that you should treat everyone with respect and you should tolerate everyone. Even though you may not like someone or they may not be your best friends you should still treat them just like anyone else and be fair towards
Similar to Jem, Scout began to see the world differently as and after the trial took place. The Finch children began to comprehend reality and understand that people can be cruel and deceiving. While Jem began to mature and comprehend this after the trial ended, Scout showed the readers her maturity before the trial even began through her narration. Before the trial begins, the three children witness an argument between Atticus and the jury in front of the jail in chapter 15. At the beginning of chapter 16 on page 208 the text reads, “The full meaning of the night’s events hit me and I began crying.” To elaborate on this sentence that Scout narrates; at this point, after witnessing what she had that day in front of the jail, she realizes the risks that her father is facing for taking the job and ill-treatment that their society would give them for being connected to the black community and treating them equally. Finally, at the end of the book, Scout presents to the readers and viewers that she has found the understanding of ‘to kill a mockingbird’. In both medias of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout tells Atticus, “Yes sir, I understand,....Well it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” This shows that Scout truly understood what her father had taught her, she realized that evil existed in the world, and it showed how she has grown throughout the
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a fictional novel about a young girl named Scout Finch. The story revolves around Scout and her family as they face prejudice and discrimination in Maycomb County. At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent girl who hasn't come into contact with the evils of the world. At the end of the novel, Scout develops with understanding of that good always wins over evil no longer is always true. The events Scout saw made her knowledgable and aware of the human nature around her to mature with understanding of the world.
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
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless novel that has been both accepted and refused by many readers. To Kill a Mockingbird took place is a town called Maycomb. It is narrated by a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, otherwise known as Scout, who learns how to deal with many things in her life. While learning to deal with racism, injustice, and criticism, she also finds courage being showed by many of her role models. The theme courage is best depicted through Boo Radley, Scout and Atticus.
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.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a multi-faceted novel which explores the principles and morals of people in the South during the 1930s. Mockingbirds are symbolic of the people that society abuse. Lee narrates the events of the novel using Scout’s voice and uses this technique to add emotional context and develop themes. Themes of racial and classist prejudice are developed by Lee to challenge the reader. These techniques are all powerful ways to alter the views of the reader.
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.
Literary elements take up substantial fragments in stories today. In the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”, there is a young boy named Jem Finch and throughout the story, you start to realise that he’s growing up, not physically, but mentally, we call that ‘the coming of age’. Jem’s coming of age experience is developed at Mrs.Dubose’s (a bad tempered old lady) house through conflict, irony, and symbol.
The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is a novel about children coming of age during the great depression in the Jim Crow south. The passage when Dill comes of age is when Dill sees the ugly truth of reality. They are in the courtroom and Mr. Gilmore is treating Tom Robinson as though he is not a human being. Dill becomes emotionally unstable and goes outside where he talks to Scout, Jem, and Mr. Raymond. They talk about how Mr. Gilmore is stereotyping black people and making ugly remarks. The author uses the literary elements characterization, dialog, and tone to promote the theme, as we get older we can handle more information.
In the novel written by Harper Lee titled To Kill a Mockingbird, it is a story that revolves around two children named Jem and Scout and their experiences in a prejudiced town as they grow up and mature into young adults. They learn lessons regarding what the real world has to offer during a time of segregation. As they discover new ideas, they also manage to learn more about themselves. Lee utilizes imagery, direct characterization, and dialogue to express the recurring theme of coming of age, also known as Bildungsroman.
Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The certain age at which this transition takes place changes in society, as does the nature of the change. Some coming of age experiences in To Kill a Mockingbird include Francis making fun of Atticus, Mrs. Dubose’s death, the narrator being in another character's shoes and the jail mob scene. Although, I will be focusing on the jail mob scene throughout this essay. Atticus leaves the house one evening and Jem, Scout, and Dill wonder where he is going. They go investigate and find him reading in front of Tom Robinson’s jail cell. Minutes later four cars pulled in front of the jail cell. The men gout out and ask Atticus if Tom Robinson is in the cell. They then
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.
Walt Disney once said, “You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway”. These words describe the clear coming of age and how there are diverse audiences to take into consideration when making a large judgement. Relating to the novel, Scout is experiencing a coming of age moment while learning to deal with different types of people and accepting the fact they will have their own way of thinking. After Scout experiences a bad first day of school she makes the decision to not go to school anymore, however Atticus teaches her that she should not let one person’s view on something put her down, that they might be raised differently that her, and that she should still respect their differences.
In the beginning of the story, Scout fights Walter Cunningham with the thought in mind that he was the one that caused her to start off on the wrong foot in the first grade. This causes others to suffer because Jem is forced to step in a resolve Scout’s “messes” and is almost forced to invite Walter over for dinner because of Scout’s immature behavior. Second, we see Cecil Jacobs remark that Scout’s father “defended a black person.” This is around the time where we see Scout start to mature. Scout becomes more mature and insightful when Atticus advises her to use her head rather than her fists and this causes her to see the way she acts in a brand new light.