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Theme Of Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Scout and Jem Finch are simply just innocent children in the beginning of TKAM, but by the end of the book they’re mature young adults. I think that a main theme of the book is coming of age and it is shown many times specifically through the eyes of Scout’s thoughts. Scout’s progress in TKAM is mostly about her loss of innocence and learning new things about the world around her. To start off Scout is an unintentional racist in the beginning of the book. While she has respect for people such as Calpurnia, she also uses the “N-word” casually in the beginning of the book and is much more respectful to people off color by the end of the book. This is presumably, because of Scout’s experience with Tom Robinson whom she whole heartily believes is innocent. This shows that Scout’s understanding off racism to African Americans is growing throughout the book. …show more content…

Scout releases after Tom Robinson’s trial that the people who live around her: her neighbors, friends, and family don’t treat everyone as equals, in the same way Atticus does. I believe that Scout and Jem’s views on society was the biggest thing that changed. After Tom Robinson’s trial it was clear that the Finches had a changed view on the society around them specifically the jury that convicted Tom Robinson and the Ewell’s who possibly lied about the account. This is the most noticeable point in the book where specifically Jem gets angry and complains about the unjust society he lives in. This is the breaking point for Jem and Scout, they quickly realize that the world isn’t as it seems and the curtain of innocence that Atticus has maintained throughout their lives suddenly swings

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Coming Of Age Events In To Kill A Mockingbird

361 Words | 2 Pages

In the book “To Kill A Mockingbird” there are numerous coming-of-age events with Jem and Scout, who are brother and sister. Scout is a different type of girl, she wears clothes that make her look like a tomboy, has her hair cut short to her shoulders and is innocent and naive. Jem is a boy who is starting to spark an interest in things such as football and guns. Scout and Jem grow up in a time of racial discrimination and segregation in Maycomb, Alabama. Yet, have a father who shows them a disparate perspective of thinking.

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To Kill A Mockingbird Innocence Quotes

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Scout just doesn't understand where all the bigotry and racism comes from though. Because of the racial intolerance happening in the novel she loses her a lot of her innocence. “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men’s hearts, Atticus

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Examples Of Tolerance In To Kill A Mockingbird

674 Words | 3 Pages

Another example of Scout's tolerance can be seen in her interactions with her father's client, Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Despite the intense racism and prejudice of the community, Scout is able to see Tom as a person, and not just as a black man. This is demonstrated when Scout says "Tom Robinson, a human being in white men's world" (Chapter 23). Through this statement, Scout is able to see the humanity in Tom and understand the injustice of his situation. In addition, Scout's relationship with her father Atticus Finch, who serves as a model of tolerance throughout the story, also helps her to

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Unreasonable Social Norms In To Kill A Mockingbird

1258 Words | 6 Pages

Examples of defying unfair social norms can be seen throughout history in times of inequality, such as the speaking out against the Jim Crow laws, or speaking for immigrant rights. Things change because of people who, like Miss Maudie, and Atticus, set a spark which will most likely influence future generations, in this case Scout and Jem, to take action for inequality and other issues, and challenge them to defy narrow-minded social norms. Scout being influenced by Atticus and Miss Maudie shaped who she is as a person. If the setting was different however, such as in the 1700s-1800s, when slavery was still legal, Scout may have grown up very differently from the To Kill A Mockingbird, counterpart, mostly more racist, and more white

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How Does Atticus Change In To Kill A Mockingbird

111 Words | 1 Pages

In “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, children Jem and Scout Finch live in Maycomb County, Alabama, surrounded by a complex cast of characters that are prone to bigotry, greatly shaping the ideals and morals of the two as they mature. Both of the children change a great deal throughout the novel, making it easy to observe their views as they change throughout the novel. Catalysts to this change include their open-minded father, Atticus, prone to spouting wisdom to his children, helping them to apply this compassion to their lives. Jem and Scout grow substantially, by learning lessons of gradual acceptance, their beliefs, attitudes, and views of the world

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Theme Of Maturing In To Kill A Mockingbird

1240 Words | 5 Pages

Maturing is something everyone goes through in life whether you go through it early or a little later in life. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows a lot about maturing. Growing up in a small town in Maycomb, Alabama where life was a lot more different from today, you mature much different and in different ways. Jem is one person who matures through the whole story and makes realizations about people around him, including his dad, Tom Robinson, and Mrs. Dubose. Jem goes into the story thinking his dad is just some old man but as he gets older, he realizes there is more to his dad.

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Development Of Coming-Of-Age Theme In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

260 Words | 2 Pages

Harper Lee develops the coming-of-age theme at the end of the novel through Jem and Scout by finally making them put themselves in other people's shoes. Jem and Scout at first were very terrified of Boo Radley; their thoughts of him were rooted from the rumors surrounding him, and they couldn't understand why he never came out of his house. Now, as they have grown, they have come to be more empathetic and think of him as a real person causing Scout to begin to call him Arthur. Clearly, after learning how Maycomb truly is, Jem put himself in Arthur’s shoes and understood and related to him and his wanting to be separated from Maycomb society. For example, Jem states, “I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the

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Theme Of Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Courage is not strength or skill, it’s simply standing up for what you believe in and what is right. This is the theme that was enrolled after Jem destroys Mrs.Dubose’s camellias and after she died in chapter 11. This passage also reveals Jem’s coming of age moment. After using conflict, symbolism, and point of view, Harper Lee was able to connect the theme with Jems coming of age moment.

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How To Kill A Mockingbird Changed

683 Words | 3 Pages

Scout was asking questions about what was going on and unlike Jem in the beginning of the book, he is not being nice about what is going on. Some argue that Jem has changed the most because, in the beginning Jem was nice and truthful and now he is not as nice or truthful. Although, Scout has changed the most because before she was immature and rude. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout has changed the most because in the beginning she was immature and rude and now she's matured more.

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Racial Slurs In To Kill A Mockingbird

1200 Words | 5 Pages

Scout herself learns from Atticus, her father, that “[y]ou never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.” (Lee 39) Throughout the novel, Scouts truly learns about racism, how it affects everyone, and how unfair it was toward the African community. We still have much to learn because there is very much still racism in today’s society. By using books like To

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To Kill A Mockingbird Adversity Analysis

867 Words | 4 Pages

Following the verdict, we see jem change from thinking that everything was fine in Maycomb and being happy to crying and yelling about the hypocrisy of Maycomb “Jem, how can you hate hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home”. Jem, immediately following the verdict, challenged the court system as a whole, saying that they make unjust decisions “No sir, they oughta do away with juries. He wasn’t guilty in the first place and they said he was”. Jem, from this experience truly understand the need of respecting and treating everyone equally. Scout on the other hand, didn’t display any emotions on the outside, She also learns about treating everyone equally.

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Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

579 Words | 3 Pages

She starts to realize how unfair the world can be, through experiencing racism, class differences, and death. At the beginning of the book, Scout is oblivious of how awful the world can be. Later on, however, she starts to realize how much racism is in the world. This is shown in the many times people in the town insult Atticus for defending Tom, such as when Scout’s cousin Francis yells at her, “He’s nothin’ but a nigger-lover!”(Lee 110).

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Theme Of Maturation In To Kill A Mockingbird

1307 Words | 6 Pages

When people mature, there is often a specific event that causes them to come out of childhood and into adulthood. Although many small moments contribute to the maturation of a child, there is usually an important event in which the child needs to grow up to comprehend. An example of this is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which is a bildungsroman, where the children begin to mature as adolescents. In the novel, there were specific points of growing up for both of the Finch children. For Jem Finch, the pivotal moment in his maturation and new understanding of the world’s unfairness is his reaction after he receives the verdict of Tom Robinson’s trial.

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Who Is The Protagonist In To Kill A Mockingbird

940 Words | 4 Pages

The novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition from their childhood ‘innocence, in which believing that people are because they had never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they are very much confronted with evil, meaning they must incorporate this into their understanding of the world. An example of this would be the portrayal of the transition from innocence to experience, one of the books important subthemes involves the threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance pose to the innocent, (Such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley) as they’re not prepared for the evil they sadly encounter during the book, and, as a result they died. Even Jem noticed to an extend by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after the trial. Whereas Scout was able to maintain her basic faith in ‘human nature’ even despite Tom’s

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Theme Of Growing Up In To Kill A Mockingbird

372 Words | 2 Pages

In Harper Lee's story To Kill a Mockingbird, it demonstrates that growing up can be a difficult and complex process. At the beginning of the novel, Scout, the protagonist of the story and the young daughter of a lawyer, Atticus, describes that at the age of two, her mother died, so she was never able to experience a mother's love and warmth. Scout, whose real name is Jean, says that her four-year-older brother Jem, remembers her clearly and would sometimes mourn over the moments of their progenitor's heart attack that led to her demise. Consequently when Scout is in the middle of a game with Jem, "he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house" (Lee 6). Jem is going through a more complicated experience about

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