Self-Identity In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Scout Finch embarks on a journey of self-identity in Maycomb, Alabama. Harper Lee allows readers an insight view of the protagonist Scout Finch through the use of first-person narrative. Throughout her journey in the southern racist town of Maycomb, Alabama, Scout grapples with gender norms, prejudice, familial conflict, and societal conflict that shape her into the woman she becomes at the end of the novel. Scout is seen as a tomboy throughout the novel that often plays with her brother Jem and his friends. In the 1930s southern town women were to be very feminine in their day-to-day lives and girls were to be dressed properly and act ladylike. However, Scout did not believe in acting ladylike, she seemed

She learns about the prejudices of her town when her father begins to defend Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Up until the case began, Scout had been unaware of the racism that lived in her community. Atticus had been assigned the case because no other lawyer in the town would take it due to the defendant’s colored skin. Atticus uses this case to build Jem and Scout’s moral views as they become individuals. Scout asks her father if he is going to win his case and he states, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try and win.” (Lee 87). Atticus is trying to explain to Scout that due to the town’s prejudices against African Americans, Tom Robinson was guilty when he was first accused. The societal issue addressed in To Kill a Mockingbird was when Tom Robinson was found guilty of the rape of Mayella Ewell, and killed shortly after escaping prison. Tom Robinson was a black male who had an injured left arm and Mayella was hit on the right side of her face, making him instantly non-guilty. The societal issue of racism ties together with Atticus’s family’s