Innocent Dill “ Experience is the harsh teacher who destroys one’s innocence.” This can be said of Charles Baker Harris, better known as Dill. A young, imaginative, and thoughtful boy, Dill realizes the harsh realities of the world throughout his summers in Maycomb. Before experience teaches him the grim truths of society, Dill possesses the childlike innocence and purity all young children possess. Experience teaches him of racism, life, and the human race through the life changing summers he spends in the microcosmo Maycomb. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Dill’s yearly summer trips reveal that experience can kill one’s innocence and teach valuable lessons. …show more content…
Racism is only one of the harsh and cruel injustices of Maycomb that Dill is exposed to during his stay there. The Tom Robinson trial is his epiphany of how cruel and wicked people can be because of one’s skin color. After he witnesses Mr. Gilmer’s obvious mockery and disrespect of Tom Robinson, Dill states “ ‘It was the way he said it made me sick, plain sick... It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way.’" (227) Dill’s innocence to racism quickly fades away after witnessing Mr. Gilmer’s cross examination. He realizes that not everyone is morally just and that people often only see skin deep. Before the trial, Dill thought that everybody was treated equally and politely, but when exposed to the black community and how they were treated by the white people, his innocence to racism rapidly faded to shreds. Experience taught him that racism is an awful and grim occurrence in our society that would most likely never go