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Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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Coming of age is an important time in a persons life.This usually happens to someone in their teenage years ranging from 12-14 years old. It’s important because it’s when a child starts to mature and look at the world differently, hence they start to understand different kinds of things and feelings. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, the book is narrated by six year old Scout Finch. It takes place in a small town in Alabama called Maycomb. Scout, her brother, Jem, and their friend Dill are intrigued by Boo Radley, their mysterious neighbor. An African American named Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white woman called Mayella Ewell. Atticus, Scout and Jem's father, defends Tom in court but he is unfortunately convicted. …show more content…

Jem was mad Tom got convicted, even though Atticus defended him the best he could. Atticus believes that when a conflict comes down to race, men can get irrational, “Whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, how fine of a family he comes from, that man is trash” (Lee 295). This means that as long as a black man is the defendant, no matter what he does, the white man always has an advantage because of his race. That’s just the sad truth that Jem had to learn during the Tom Robinson trial. And because of this we see Jem's maturity develop and grow.. After the Tom Robinson case, Jem came to the conclusion that his town wasn't as great as he thought it was. They were truly prejudiced people who were not nice. While Aunt Alexandra scolds Scout for wanting to have Walter Cunningham, someone who she views as trash, come over and have dinner, she gets really upset. She then privately turned to Jem for clarification. Jem explains to Scout that he’s been thinking about a social stratification system in Maycomb, and he feels the people of Maycomb can be broken into groups. Jem states that there are four kinds of people in Maycomb

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Jem’s perfect picture of the Maycomb society has crumbled into piece after watching the Tom Robinson case. “His face was streaked in angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd. ‘It ain’t right,’ he muttered,”(Lee

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(Need a hook). The author uses of view of a child, Scout Finch, along with two other children, Jem Finch and Dill, to show the innocence of children is taken away from the coming of age. She uses a trial against a black man raping a white girl to show how children are innocent. Harper Lee uses life lessons to show that Scouts coming of age. Scout says, “Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in” (Lee 129).

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Have you unfairly judged someone based on the way they look? In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, one of Scout’s coming-of-age moments is when she judges Mr. Raymond for being intoxicated. However, she realizes that he was just pretending to be drunk. The author, Harper Lee, uses conflict and deception to convey the theme that judging someone without being in their shoes is unjust. Moreover, in the novel, Scout is an arrogant kid who later in the book experiences a coming-of-age moment, and she starts to understand her community more.

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In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and Scouts changing perspective of Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley represents a coming of age moment because it demonstrates a breaking away from the childlike imagination that had previously explained all of their questions and superstitions about the Radley’s. A coming-of-age moment is the transition of thinking that occurs when someone learns empathy. At the start of the novel, in many situations, Scout and Jem demonstrate childish behavior and thinking when Jem is taunted into touching the side of the Radley home by Scout and Dill. The book reads, “Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his palm and ran back past us” (18). From this portion of the novel we can tell that Jem and Scout clearly regarded the Radley home and its occupants with novelty and even fear.

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At the beginning of the story, Scout, like many others in Maycomb, holds racial biases influenced by the societal norms of her times. She witnesses the injustice faced by Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, Scout begins to question and challenge the discriminatory beliefs of those around her. “ I think there’s just one kind of folk. Folks." (page 259)

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Have you ever done something you regret, and wish you could fix it? To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is a coming of age story about Scout and Jem, two kids living in a town infested with racism. Although the book was published in 1960, it emphasizes the absurd reality that people experienced during the great depression in 1930. Lee uses the elements of conflict, setting, and character in chapter 11 to display maturing as being the bigger person and learning to compromise to be successful in life. To begin, Lee makes it translucent that they have conflicts with Mrs. Dubose perpetually when they encounter each other.

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Many people have coming-of-age moments in life. If it's by an event, ritual, or even a piece of information, people still have coming-of-age moments in life. To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, is a coming-of-age novel that takes place in the Jim Crow South. The narrator of this novel is a young girl named Jean Lousie “Scout” Finch. She is learning about racism in the 1930s in Alabama, as her father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man, Tom Robison, who was accused of raping a woman.

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Arian Weatherwax Teacher ELA 9, May, 2024. The “To Kill A Mockingbird Final Rough Draft” Introduction Paragraph (150 words) “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is based on a true story and the book is commonly used as an example of coming of age stories. In “To Kill a Mockingbird” Atticus, a white man, defends Tom Robinson in court and Bob Ewell, who is Maybelle Ewell's dad, is the woman that is accusing Tom Robinson of raping her.

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‘It ain’t right…’ ” (pg 242) Jem had false hopes in Maycomb’s justice system. He didn’t understand that racism and the Jim Crow laws would get in the way of equal justice. His idealistic views are shattered when he learns he was wrong.

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As verbalized by the diarist Anne Frank herself, “‘Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands’” (Goodreads 1). Coming of age is a process depicted through movies and novels through the Bildungsroman plot line. The protagonist, in this form of a plot line, has to face society and its difficulties. The protagonist inclines to have an emotional loss, which triggers the commencement of the journey itself.

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Annia 5/14 Embedded Assessment 2 My favorite coming of age example in the book To Kill a Mockingbird was in the early chapters in the book where Scout and Jem were obsessed with getting to see Boo Radley even though Atticus told them leave him alone. In the second to last chapter Boo Radley saved scout and Jem when Bob Ewell attacked them. It’s my favorite part because Scout finally realizes that Boo Radley is not how the town portrayed him to be.

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The justice system in Maycomb is deeply racist and subsequently heavily flawed. This truth is not one Jem wants to hear, nor one he can fully process at such a young age. His sister, Scout, more or less lives her life as she did before, but Jem, in his adolescent state, cannot shake the uneasy feeling the results of the trial planted deep in his stomach. He becomes closed off, surly, unapproachable. When his sister brings up the trial, asking “Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad and then turn around and be ugly to folks right at home-” (pg. 249-250), he cuts her off with a ferocity that's almost hostile.

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Harper Lee's classic book To Kill a Mockingbird focuses on the concept of coming of age through the lives of its two main characters, Jem and Scout. The 1930s were a time of racial injustice and discrimination in the American South, which is the setting in which the novel is set. The characters are made to confront their own beliefs and ideas as a result of the events that take place in the story, which eventually leads to their personal development. Lee uses symbolism and imagery to convey the themes of losing one's innocence and racial injustice.

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Do you know when you started to understand things in a more mature way than before? Well, in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, we can see how individual characters start to see things in a more mature way as they grow up and experience different things. In this book, we follow the main character Scout who is 6 with her 10-year-old brother Jem and their father Atticus in a small town in Alabama. Scout and Jem spend most of their time in school or messing around the mysterious Radley house with their friend Dill during the summer. Then, there is a court trial that shocks and affects the whole town.

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“To Kill a Mockingbird “is a coming of age novel. Discuss this statement, with reference to at least two characters. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” there is evidence of a coming of age story or lesson. Scout learns not to judge people and try and understand where they are coming from and to view a situation from their point of view.

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