To Kill A Mockingbird is a bildungsroman that takes place during the great depression. The main characters, Jem, Scout and Atticus are loosely based off of the author, Harper Lee’s childhood. The town of Maycomb is the setting, a poor town in Alabama. Jem, Scout, and Atticus are a family in this town. Atticus, the father, a lawyer. Jem and scout his children. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird she uses the symbolic significance of the snowman, mad dog, and white camellia to foreshadow a loss of innocence.
To begin, the snowman foreshadows a loss of innocence. Jem and Scout make a snowman on their day off of school. There is so little snow they make the center out of mud, then cover it with snow. Scout narrates, “Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which he added another load, and another until he had constructed a torso.” (Lee 89). The snowman represents the coming together of black and white men with mud and snow. This relates to the trial, with the joining of Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson. Later in the story, there has been a fire, ruining Miss Maudie’s house and
…show more content…
Mrs. Dubose insults Atticus for defending a black man in court while conversing with Jem. Jem goes wild and throws a tantrum. Scout narrates, “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off of every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves.” (Lee 137). White camellias symbolize innocence, so when Jem cut the flowers down, the action symbolized a loss of innocence. Later in the book, after the trial, Tom Robinson lost, and Jem, now mature enough to understand, was very upset. Scout narrates, “It was Jem’s turn to cry, his face was streaked with angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd.” (Lee 284). After the camellia incident, Jem has been totally different, he is becoming an adult. Scared, he is finally seeing the future of