Harper Lee Chapter 11

No one really knows what another person has gone through. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of two young white kids growing up in their small community in the 1930s. The kids learn that people will make prejudices about you just by the way you look. As their childhood goes on, they witness life from different experiences and discover motifs that will help guide them in their futures. Chapter 11 includes Jem having to read to Mrs. Dubose as a result of destroying her garden. Towards the end of the chapter, Jem and Scout find out that Mrs. Dubose was fighting an addiction the entire time. In chapter 11, Harper Lee uses the literary elements of conflict, setting, and character to convey the theme that everyone coming of age will eventually

Additionally, setting is used to describe Mrs. Dubose’s as a literary element by Harper Lee to convey the theme to the readers. Scout states, “An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses where there are coal-oil lamps, water dippers, and unbleached domestic sheets. It always made me afraid, expectant, watchful” (Lee 121). This describes Mrs. Dubose’s house. It narrates the discomfort and disgust of the kids when they walk in. This uncomfortable feeling inside the house only builds onto Jem and Scout’s dismay towards the situation and Mrs. Dubose. Scout also mentions, “The alarm clock went off and scared us stiff. A minute later, nerves still tingling, Jem and I were on the sidewalk headed home. We did not run away, Jessie sent us: before the clock wound down she was in the room pushing Jem and me out of it. ‘Shoo,’ she said, ‘you all go home.’ Jem hesitated at the door. ‘It’s time for her medicine,’ Jessie said” (Lee 123). This reveals Mrs. Dubose’s “medicine.” The children had not known before that Mrs. Dubose takes medicine, so this was a shock to them as they learned something new about the old lady.