A Comparison Of Childhood In Marigolds And To Kill A Mockingbird

The journey from childhood to adulthood is something everyone can relate to. Even though everyone has their own personal experiences. In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Lizabeth and Jem have very different real life experiences that give both characters reality checks showing the pair how the world does not cater to childhood innocence, bringing them into the next step of adulthood.

In the book, “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, Lizabeth’s journey is filled with more emotions compared to Jem’s, representing the more womanly and violent epiphany that she has. In the text it states, “Joy and rage and wild animal gladness and shame become tangled together in the multicolored skein of fourteen-going-on-fifteen

In the text, it states, “This change in Jem had come about in a matter of weeks. – Overnight, it seemed, Jem had acquired an alien set of values and was trying to impose them on me: several times he went so far as to tell me what to do” (Lee 115). As a boy, Jem goes through the changes of growing up differently from Lizabeth. Scout sees Jem maturing as an inconvenience to her childhood fantasy of always having her brother there to play with. In the book, it says, “ “They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep” (Lee 213). Not only does Jem have Scout there to see him mature and grow, Atticus is there to help guide him through the trial and simply become a man. Very different from Lizabeth, his family has all of the resources for them to have a stress free childhood and yet Jem is still faced with things no child should have to sit and worry about. The trial brings many thoughts and questions to Jem’s mind, molding the person he becomes towards the end of the book. While recognizing the injustice Tom Robinson was faced with, Jem becomes more cynical after the trial. No longer believing in the society that he thought he knew. Marking his reality check, ridding him of his childlike innocence and