How Does Jem Change In To Kill A Mockingbird

Everyone changes throughout their lives as they get older. They understand more about the world, they develop opinions on a variety of subjects and their behaviour can be affected by their experiences in life. However, everyone learns about the terrible things that happen in this world at some point, but can become a much better person from that. Through their experience with discrimination in Maycomb, Jem and Scout change over the course of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” by becoming more mature and stopped having prejudice against some people. Jem and Scout show that change after the court case as they witness and realize how discriminative the people in Maycomb are.

Jem and Scout starts to understand more about why Boo Radley stays

Near the end of the court case, we see how optimistic Jem is about the verdict, as he states to Reverend Sykes “Don’t fret it, we’ve won it. Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard” (Lee 221). However, Jem is soon heartbroken after the jury convicts Tom Robinson for his crime and complains about it to Atticus by shouting “It ain’t right. He didn’t kill anybody even if he was guilty” (Lee 232). Scout also learns about how racist Maycomb is when she figures out why Mr. Dolphus Raymond secretly drinks Coca-Cola instead of beer. He does this so that he can marry a black woman, which it is illegal in Maycomb for a black and white person to marry. Mr. Raymond claims “Some folks don’t like the way I live… I try to give them a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason… He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does” (Lee 213). This shows Scout and Jem’s loss of innocence as part of growing up because they learn about one of the horrible issues that is happening in the United States, how Maycomb is being racist and having prejudice against black people. Jem especially doesn’t take this well since he believed that Maycomb had citizens who behaved like this and gets disturbed and traumatized from this

After Scout runs into her room when Aunt Alexandra calls her a problem, Jem follows her to her room and tells her “Don’t let Aunty aggravate you… she’s trying to make you a lady” (Lee 238). Jem also goes on to explain how there are four types of people in Maycomb to Scout, which he then states to Scout “Our kind of folks don’t like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don’t like the Ewells and the Ewells hate and despise the coloured folks” (Lee 239). Later on in the conversation, Scout tells Jem that “Nothin’s wrong with [Walter]. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 240). This shows Jem and Scout change of opinion after they learn about how Maycomb is discriminating others based on race, gender, class and other factors. Instead of going along with how Maycomb and society in general is discriminating people, which they used to before, Scout and Jem believe that Maycomb should be respecting people because of who they are and should not let it be a deciding factor that determines if that person is good or