The Theme Of Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird, By Harper Lee

“The price of wisdom is innocence”(Mahira Khan). Authors utilize ideas like this to portray the nature of maturity in their pieces. Harper Lee wants to convey themes like the quote to get her message across about a topic. She takes a deep dive into the subject of coming of age in her award-winning novel. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee utilizes literary elements to portray that innocence may need to be lost for one’s coming of age.

In chapter 9, the author displays a loss of innocence using a man vs man conflict as well as characterization when Scout gets into a fight with Cecil and asks Atticus about his case. After Scout’s predicament with Cecil, she began to wonder if what he said was true. She goes to her father and asks, “Do you defend niggers,

At this point in the book, Scout believes that Mr. Raymond is a bad man who drinks too much. As Mr. Raymond asks Dill over so he can drink something, Scout thinks, “As Mr. Dolphus Raymond was an evil man I accepted his invitation reluctantly, but I followed Dill”(267). This instance of characterization shows that Scout is assuming the likeness of Mr. Raymond’s character, and she goes on to learn that it may not be so true after all. He shows Scout and the others that he isn’t the man that everyone believes him to be. After Mr. Raymond reveals himself to Scout, she asks, “You mean all you drink in that sack’s Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?”(267). This use of irony shows Scout that her assumptions about people won’t always be correct. While they are outside, Mr. Raymond tells Scout that she hasn’t seen what the people in their world are like. He teaches her about her father and the world when he says, “I don’t reckon it’s—Miss Jean Louise, you don’t know your pa’s not a run-of-the-mill man, it’ll take a few years for that to sink in—you haven’t seen enough of the world yet”(269). This piece of characterization portrays that Scout is learning more about the world, and she is losing some of her childish innocence in the process. Using irony and

Scout discovered that it was Boo Radley who had saved her brother. She displays her newfound kindness towards him when she says, “You can pet him, Mr. Arthur, he’s asleep”(372). This instance of characterization shows Scout’s character change greatly from being the girl scared of Boo Radley to being the one who makes friends with him. Next, characterization is used to display that Scout changed her perspective on how she sees the world. She displays her knowledge from Atticus when she says, “One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them”(374). This literary element shows that Scout lost some of her childish innocence to walk around in other people's shoes and she matured in the process. Atticus reads Scout a story called The Gray Ghost, and it relates to what was happening in her life. She connects the book to the conflict with Boo Radley when she says, “An’ they chased him ‘n’ never could catch him ‘cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things”(376). Lee uses the story of The Gray Ghost to display that Scout learned many things about Boo Radley as well as the harsh reality that people live in. In chapter 31, Scout saw Boo Radley for who he was, and she had to leave behind a great piece of