Growing up is a windy road that everyone must travel. It often contains roadblocks that make the journey harder. However, these obstacles, rather than slowing one down, make one stronger and can accelerate the growing up process. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the reader is told the story of two children who have many roadblocks on their path to adulthood. They are faced with questions of morality, prejudice, and stereotypes which the children work through and, as a result, are shaped into virtuous young adults. Lee demonstrates the theme of growing up through the Finch children, where they highlight the importance of making hard decisions and following one’s own moral compass during the growing-up process.
Jem faces multiple hard decisions
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Throughout the novel, Scout is challenged by stereotypes of women in the 1930s. Scout doesn’t see the point in acting like a woman and prefers to play with the boys. As the boys grow older, they poke fun at Scout which forces her to “on pain of being called a g-irl, [spend] most of my remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front porch" (42). Scout wants to follow her own morals of having freedom over how she acts, while society tries to fold her into a “model woman”. Being faced with a tough battle of breaking through social norms to pursue her own happiness and morals, Scout grows into a respectable young woman without having to submit to Maycomb’s customs. Her virtue is exhibited when one of her classmates spreads the rumor that Scout’s dad ”defended n*****s” (77). Scout wants to defend her father by attacking the student but she is able to contain herself by remembering “Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting and more; I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be” (77). Scout exhibits self-control in order to honor her father’s request, conveying her undoubtable maturity while maintaining her own