Scout Character Development

After reading the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, it becomes clear that the narrator and one of the two protagonists, Jean Louise Finch (Scout), has had their character develop and evolve throughout the novel. The book’s timeline, obviously consists of it’s plot, begins with Scout being a six year old girl with a tomboyish personality due to her only immediate family being her father, Atticus, and her brother, Jem, who is ten years old. Throughout the book, Scout begins with her thinking with her fists, believing in superstition, and not understanding how to think in other people's shoes, while growing up and changing her beliefs at the end of the novel. First and foremost, Scout is a bit quick to act at the beginning of the

Jem emphasizes, “Yawl hush,” growled Jem, “you act like you believe in Hot Steams”(36). The context in which the conversation about Hot Steams occurs is devoid of laughter, which would be used if they were joking about it. Rather, Jem scowls at Scout when she says that it’s N-talk, but Scout still doesn’t do anything to show she doesn’t believe in them, such as a scoff or a chuckle. However, far later in the novel, it is emphasized by Scout, “We laughed. Haints, Hot steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our years as mist with sunrise”(254). Through the use of comparison, Harper Lee states how growing up, even if it may be a few years, can tame ideals that claims such as superstition can bring with using Scout and Jem. While growing up does get rid of these ideas, the advancement of character using a simple disbelief of superstition can seem irrelevant and would be slow, but it would still be possible to have used details like this to advance

Atticus states, “You’ll never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (30). When Atticus says this to Scout, he wants Scout to know the same lesson that kids in the current day should know. Scout hadn’t thought of her teacher in the first grade this way, but although she was the target, this also refers to Arthur “Boo” Radley. Far later in the novel, Scout states, “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough”(Lee 279). This shows how, after trying to make Arthur come out for approximately 3 years, she learns that Arthur was watching over her and Jem all of those years, and what it may have been like for him. She relays this through a summary of the years through the Radley shutters, and can only think of how kind he was to help them through the years and to give them many things, their lives