Mistakes In To Kill A Mockingbird

Children are constantly affected by the mistakes their parents make, and the children in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird are no exception. Despite the father-like approach Jem Finch takes towards Scout and Dill, the three of them remain childlike. Although Mayella Ewell, Bob Ewell, and Tom Robinson were obviously affected by the outcome of the trial, the children were internally affected by the outcome of the trial. Before the trial started, Jem Finch, as well as many children in Maycomb, was unaware of the severity of the situation. “Let’s go home, Cal, they don’t want us here-” Jem understood there was a social divide between the black community and the white community, but he didn’t understand the intensity of the social stigma (Lee, 136). He was able to understand complex things, like how his father, no matter how involved he was in Jem and Scout’s lives, was an absentee father, and Jem stepped up to fulfill the father-like roll to Scout and, to a lesser extent, Dill. When, in chapter fifteen, Jem, talking to Scout and Dill, said “Don’t go to him go to him, he

While sitting in a section that white adults would not be caught dead in, Jem begins to understand the severity of the social standings. He takes to heart what he, earlier before the trial, had told his sister about Mr. Dolphus Raymond. Dolphus Raymond was so much of a social outlier that he took to being a false drunk to justify his actions. Although being a white man, Dolphus takes up living in the Black community, living with his African American wife and their mixed children. Jem, in response to Scout’s question about mixed children says, “Colored people won’t have ‘em [mixed children] because they’re half white; white folks won't have ‘em ‘cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere. ...They don’t mind ‘em up north”