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Empathy And Understanding Others In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, empathy and understanding others is demonstrated by the actions of several characters and is one of the many empowering themes. It is also unique and different than any of the other themes, and even connects to the novel’s title. Atticus Finch’s famous quote states, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (Lee33). Many characters learn to become more empathetic towards others which causes them to become better people, and in some cases, helps them mature.
Out of all of the characters, Atticus Finch is the most empathetic towards others. This is probably due to his older age and wisdom, and his daughter, …show more content…

Dolphus Raymond, but there is one person that seems to affect Jem quite powerfully. Her name is Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, the Finch’s neighbor who always criticizes Jem and Scout’s behavior whenever they walk by. One day,the kids were walking home from town and had already endured Mrs. Dubose’s taunts on the way there. Jem, who could not hold in his anger any longer takes the baton that he had just bought Scout and begins to destroy Mrs. Dubose’s camellias. Atticus finds out and tells Jem to go apologize to her. When he gets back, he says Mrs. Dubose wants Jem to come to her house every afternoon and read to her. Jem and Scout think she is making Jem do this because she is just a cruel person, but they find out later she had another reason. After she dies, Atticus tells them that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, and she was using Jem reading to distract her in between the time that she took her medication. Atticus tells Jem, “‘She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody’” (Lee 127). Her successfully achieved goal was to no longer be an addict when she died. Jem empathizes with her and the fact that she might not be that mean of a person, and now understands that what Mrs. Dubose did took real courage according to

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From Scout’s perspective, she, as well as Jem, view Mrs. Dubose as an irate and racist old woman who frequently calls out insults from her front porch, “Mrs. Dubose would become bored and pick on us: ‘Jeremy Finch, I told you you’d live to regret tearing up my camellias. You regret it now, don’t you?’” (Lee 146). Nonetheless, it is only later in the novel that Mrs. Dubose’s true strength is revealed. The central conflict of the scene occurs through Jem’s punishment, and realization as well as Mrs. Dubose’s inner conflict in her fight against her own morphine addiction.

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When certain situations happen to people with good morals, they feel empathy for those who do not understand people as easily. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, a respectable lawyer and his children are involved in many unique experiences that help them learn necessary life lessons about society during the 1900’s. Scout and Jem learn a particularly important lesson about racial injustice when their father takes on a life-changing case. Upstanding characters show empathy more than others since good morals lead to self-respect and happiness, it allows people to appreciate the good around them. Throughout the novel, exemplary characters like Maudie Atkinson, Atticus Finch, and Scout Finch demonstrate empathy for characters who don’t

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Harper Lee and Empathy in “To Kill A Mockingbird” By Tanaka Rwodzi In Harper Lee’s critically acclaimed magnum opus “To Kill A Mockingbird;” Lee emphasizes her view on the importance of empathy through how she depicts empathy in regards to the characters Scout, Tom Robinson, and Atticus. “To Kill A Mockingbird” is a novel shown from the view of Scout, a young girl living in the sleepy town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s, and her and her brothers escapades; mainly their captivation over an elusive local resident who doesn’t leave his house, and the drawn-out process of a court case against a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of rape. Throughout the novel, Harper Lee emphasizes the importance of empathy to her through how she

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Mrs. Dubose’s unseen patience displays her true intentions to prove that appearances are not always as they seem. “It suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a little longer at Mrs. Dubose’s, that the alarm clock went off a few minutes later every day, and that she was well into one of her fits by the time it sounded” (Lee 145). After Jem cuts down Mrs. Dubose’s camellia’s for calling Atticus bad names, Mrs. Dubose punishes Jem by having him come and read to her every day for two hours. However, Jem and Scout soon find out that Mrs. Dubose actually extends their time at her house everyday by a couple minutes. While it seems like a harsh punishment, Mrs. Dubose’s true intention of extending the time each day was so that she could fight her addiction a little longer.

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Empathy is steadily mixed into the conversations and words of many characters in the book. For example, Atticus is one of the most notably empathetic characters. His famous quote, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until

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"You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them”(Page 798). This is a very important lesson to know in life because it explains why a man does the things he does. If this lesson of empathy is applied to life, the true characteristics of man will be revealed. To Kill a Mockingbird is the perfect example of empathy. The novel plainly states empathy all thought out the book and the examples can easily be applied to our lives.

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It is very important that writers are able to send a message to their reader with their book. Authors best do this by bringing about empathy. In order to send this message, authors often develop strong characters that go through various problems and struggles. The book, To Kill a Mockingbird, shows this very well with its characters Scout Finch and Tom Robinson. This book helps the readers learn from the character’s reactions to their problems.

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“In the corner of the room was a brass bed, and in the bed was Mrs. Dubose. I wondered if Jems activities had put her there and for a moment I felt sorry for her.” The reason why Jem and Scout were at Mrs. Dubose’s house, was because Jem and Scout were walking by her house when Dubose started yelling at the kids saying that Atticus is not any better than the “niggers and trash he works for.” Jem lost his temper and takes Scouts baton he bought for her and snaps it in half. Jem destroys all of

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Lack Of Empathy Leads To An Imbalance Of Power: Former President Barack Obama had stated, “It’s the lack of empathy that makes it very easy for us to plunge into wars.” Obama infers that when people lose empathy, they lose the ability to understand others, which is a key emotion that helps people interact. His message connects to Marxism, a literary theory involving an imbalance of power. In the story “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the characters’ experiences prove the reader of the significance a lack of empathy causes to the balance of power. An application of Marxism reveals that an imbalance of authoritative power is caused by a lack of empathy.

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In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the moral empathy is not adequately represented towards other Maycomb County folks. People are just people and no one is naturally different from anyone else, excluding the fact that there are some people who take advantage of their power. Early in the novel, the author introduces the readers to a divided society in which both, the young and old, are heavily

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The Contrast of Empathy and Racism Although Americans follow the same rules and government, there is a clear divide between the priorities of the citizens. As with Americans, in Maycomb, Alabama, there is a clear divide in people’s viewpoints. Some of them are empathetic of others and see everyone with an open mind while others generalize people and can immediately make an assumption about someone from the color of their skin. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, she makes it clear that there are two kinds of people in Maycomb, the majority whom are racist and the select few who are empathic. Empathy is shown throughout the novel in many situations by the Finch family.

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To begin, there are many folks who lack human compassion in harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”, but no one compares to the compassion of Atticus Finch who is a successful, well known, respected

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The Meaning of the Mockingbird Innocent people, expunged by the viciousness of the world. Starting to develop empathy for others is something that goes along with your maturity level, but a lot of people fail to learn it. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the moral of the story was to show that the mockingbird symbolizes innocence and a lack of empathy.

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Empathy makes people understand each other's feelings. (“”You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb in his skin and walk around in it” (Chapter 3). In this quote the literary element point of view is demonstrated when Atticus tells his children to think of other people’s feelings. This shows how Atticus is teaching his children to walk in other people's shoes. He is giving them an example of other people's feelings.

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Through To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee teaches us the righteousness of empathy. Harper Lee 's technique of writing and coinciding Christian beliefs weaved through emphasizes the importance of the story 's moral and themes. It is through Scout, the young dynamic and protagonist, that Lee opens the reader 's eyes to a realistic world of prejudice and inequality during the 1930s. Though introducing many characters throughout the novel, it is through Lee 's wise father character, Atticus Finch, that she further helps teach her readers life lessons, one being empathy. While narrating in first person, Lee further details her novel with the setting and use of style and diction.

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