Loss Of Knowledge In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and Jem’s actions demonstrate that life experience is needed to gain knowledge about society. Scout’s encounter with Cecil Jacobs taught her that many people in Maycomb are prejudiced against black people. Additionally, when Jem realizes that Nathan Radley cement the tree where Boo Radley gave him and Scout presents, he starts to understand Boo Radley as a person. It may seem that experience isn’t essential to gain knowledge when Scout acquires knowledge through the books that Atticus gives her to read. However, the real knowledge Scout gains is experiencing her father defend Tom Robinson. Cecil Jacobs torments Scout by making negative comments about Atticus defending Tom Robinson.
After talking

Boo Radley, the “strange” neighbor, starts to leave Jem and Scout presents as his only way to communicate with the outside world. After Jem found the hole filled with cement he asked Mr. Radley “ ‘ah—did you put cement in that hole in that tree down yonder?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I filled it up.’ ‘Why’d you do it, sir?’ ‘Tree’s dying. You plug ’em with cement when they’re sick. You ought to know that Jem’ ” (Lee 70). Jem then later asks Atticus, “ ‘Is that tree dyin’?’ ‘Why no, son, I don’t think so. Look at the leaves, they’re all green and full, no brown patches anywhere—’ ‘It ain’t even sick?’ ‘That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem’ ” (Lee 71). After talking with Atticus he stood on the porch “until nightfall, and I waited for him. When we went in the house I saw he had been crying; his face was dirty in the right places, but I thought it odd that I had not heard him” (Lee 71). Jem receives presents in the hole inside the tree and then Nathan Radley cements it which helps Jem learn that Nathan Radley is cutting the connections of Boo Radley with the outside world. After this experience, Jem finally sees Boo Radley as a real person which leads him to lose his innocence. Therefore, Jem is able to attain knowledge because of the experiences he has with Nathan and Boo Radley. Despite Jem and Scout indicating that

During Scout’s first day of school, her teacher, Miss Caroline discovers that Scout can read more than the kids in her classroom. When Scout “read the alphabet a faint line appeared between [Miss Caroline’s] eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate” (Lee 19). Although Scout did gain knowledge from reading, the actual knowledge she learned about society is actually experiencing the court case. Dolphus Raymond tells Scout that she hasn’t “ ‘even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse’ ” (Lee 229). The actual knowledge that Scout gained was from watching Atticus defend Tom Robinson because from there she was able to see the perspective of the real society that she was born into. Even though Scout reads many books and articles those don’t give her enough information to understand the real world. When Scout experienced the court case, she saw her father stand up for what’s right even if society is extremely against it which demonstrates that she could never understand the racial attitudes of people without seeing it for herself. Although Scout does gain knowledge from her books, the court case gave her fundamental knowledge about