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How Does Jem Mature In To Kill A Mockingbird

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Jem grows from a little boy to an intelligent young man. Throughout the book, he discerns many things that shape his personality. As Jem grows, he learns how bad society is and that not everyone is perfect. Fortunately for Jem, this ends up helping him and he finds out that Atticus is a hero and that he should look up to Atticus. Through Atticus and the trial, Jem loses his innocence by learning about prejudice, bravery, and that the justice system is crippled.
Throughout the book, Jem learns about prejudice and not to judge because no one is just like him and people are different. He learns most about this from Atticus. For example, when Scout comes home from school and gets angry because her teacher, Miss Caroline, doesn’t want her to read at home. Atticus responds by telling her that she shouldn’t say anything about Miss Caroline because Scout doesn’t …show more content…

After Atticus loses his trial, Jem notices that the Maycomb County justice system is broken and it needs help, “Then it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away with juries.”(294) This shows that Jem now understands that people are racist in everything and racism needs to be fought. On top of realizing that the justice system is in shambles, Jem realized that Tom Robinson’s case was very good at showing that. Knowing this, Jem concludes that the Maycomb County justice system needs unbiased people to join the jury. Here, Atticus is telling Jem that if he were on the jury, the outcome would have been different, “‘If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man.’”(294) This shows that even Atticus, a lawyer, agrees with Jem that the justice system is wrong. With Atticus agreeing with him it shows that Jem is saying intelligent things and that he is not saying things that are random and

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Being Brave To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, is a tale of two children, Jem and Scout. This powerfully inspiring and educational story entails daily life of the children, as well as the struggles they faced while their father is defending a black man’s case during a racially segregated time period. As an author, Harper Lee developed multiple themes throughout this story. These themes include good, evil, justice, fear, family, forgiveness, and compassion.

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After hours of waiting, the jury came back in. Scout explains how “A jury never looks at the defendant if it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson… Judge Taylor was polling the jury; ‘ Guilty...Guilty...Guilty’”(211) When Scout and Jem hear the verdict, they are distraught. As they were walking home, “It was Jem’s turn to cry.. ‘It’s not right, Atticus’”(212)

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Jem, a young and smart boy develops and matures through many unique situations in the novel. Jem is exposed to the harsh belief, judgement and circumstances of the court at a very young age. Following his father, Jem involves himself in the trial between Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell yet takes Tom’s side due to his father's involvement. Jem slowly loses faith in the justice system and is faced with a loss of innocence as explained by Scout“It was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd.

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Jem is clearly conflicted over Tom being guilty. Jem unlike the other Maycomb residents realizes the crudeness and unfairness of the case. Everyone knows that Atticus had given all factual evidence but Tom was guilty because he was black. In Today’s society the same goes. From the New York Times Article, “Blacks were also slightly more likely to be sentenced to prison than whites.

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Jem further understood the true meaning of moral courage when he saw Atticus defending Tom Robinson, a black man. Although Atticus was hugely outnumbered and even cornered by Mr Cunningham and some other people, he did not back down from them. Instead, he seemed even more determined to win the case and prove Tom Robinson 's innocence to all of Maycomb County. Almost everyone in Maycomb County had criticised Atticus and his children for taking up the case of defending Tom Robinson and they were even called "nigger lovers" by many. At first, Jem did not understand why his father chose to defend Tom Robinson when he knew that people would whisper and gossip about it and that the possibility of him winning the case was very low.

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