Jacob Berman
Ms. Wohlstattar
Period 2, English 1
3 May 2023
To Kill A Mockingbird: Scout’s Fight Against Prejudice
To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, explored the moral issue of prejudice through the experience of a young girl growing up in a rural southern town. This young girl, who goes by the name of Scout, enters the world as a child in all senses of the world, naive to the hate corrupting her and her town. As the story goes on, both Scout’s physical and mental age increases, and with it her knowledge and feelings about prejudice, and her willingness to fight against it.
In the beginning, Scout’s sense of morality is undeveloped, and her opinions on people are purely based on what they look like or do, not what their character is. After
…show more content…
As Atticus is delivering his final speech to the courthouse about the Tom Robinson case, Scout and Dill talk to Dolphus Raymond, a person Scout had previously viewed as evil due to him having mixed children and being constantly drunk with whisky. She had based her opinion of him purely on what she heard of him. However, she quickly learns he mainly drinks Coca-Cola, pretending to be drunk to give folks a reason for his ways. Scout starts to want to understand him. “I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be here listening to this sinful man who had mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was fascinating. I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with his deepest secret? I asked him why”(Lee 205). Scout starts to want to comprehend other’s views, and why they think the way they do. She starts to base her opinions of people and her interactions with people on her own opinions, not those of others that she had adopted. Just this simple change starts her fight against prejudice in her town. As Scout and Dill say goodbye, Dill tells Mr. Raymond he was glad to have met him, and Scout agrees, a complete turnaround from her opinion of the “evil” man