Scout Finch Reflection

Judy Collins once said, “I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.” Growing as a person is not only growing physically, but also growing emotionally and mentally. It is about having your own thoughts, and seeing the world from a different perspective as the years go on. Learning about the cruel realities of society can be difficult. For instance, as scout grows up in the novel, To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee, she sees the changes in her society. To Kill a mockingbird takes place in the 1960s, in a small Southern town, named Maycomb. The novel is based on Harper Lee’s own life and how she learned to grow up with racial prejudice. Harper Lee’s character is named Scout, who is a young girl with unusual traits, both in

Atticus teaches Scout to read at a young age, which causes her to have more knowledge then any other child her age. Scout states, “I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily newspaper”(Lee 23). Scout is by far the smartest girl of her class, and the slow pace of the school curriculum frustrates her. Additionally, at the end of the trial, Scout utilises her experience as an attorney's child to recognise that none of the juries looked at Tom Robinson. Scout narrates, “ A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson”( Lee 282). Judging from this evidence Scout’s knowledge towards peoples body language is higher than any other kids her age. The readers might not understand this, but one of the reasons she recognises this is because of her father’s knowledge that he passed on to his daughter. Furthermore, Scout is a young girl with an outgoing personality, but she still manages to keep herself together when she learns about Tom Robinson’s death. Scout narrates, “after all, if Aunty could be a lady so could I” (Lee 318). Scout starts to understand that a true lady is someone who does not let their emotions overcome themselves no matter how hard the situation can get. Harper Lee wants the readers to know that Scout is amazed by how Aunt

The Maycomb Community in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird influence Scout to learn about the hard realities of life. An important theme from this novel is the change from how people see good and evil throughout the years. Everyone in the world should have the right to live in an anti racist society. The world would be a more enjoyable place, if children were not forced to grow up in an environment with social prejudice. The reader should recall that Scout is forced to live like this, but she doesn’t recognise what the real world is like because she is a child. Where and how people grow up will effect who they will become in the future and overcoming difficult obstacles is part of growing up as a whole. Joyce Meyer once wrote “We don’t grow when things are easy, we grow when we face