Late at night in Maycomb, Alabama, a breeze whispers across a porch. A young girl feels the coolness wash over her feet and shivers, but otherwise is still. She gazes at the world as if seeing it for the first time. Guided by her curiosity and recent events, Scout Finch discovers the true nature of her hometown in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. When the story begins, she is six years old and generally unaware of the inner workings of society, but by the end of the book, three years have passed and Scout has lost much of that ignorance. Although Scout displays childlike innocence throughout much of the book, that naiveté is whittled down by her experiences with Mrs. Dubose, Tom Robinson’s Trial, and Bob Ewell.
Reading to Mrs. Dubose exposes Scout to a part of the world she hadn’t previously known. Atticus forces Scout’s brother, Jem to read to Mrs. Dubose every day, and Scout accompanies him. Ms. Dubose is an old, mean woman, who
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Tom Robinson was accused of rape and assault by Mayella Ewell and her father, though all the evidence pointed to the idea that Mayella’s father had been the one who had beaten her. As Scout watches, Atticus asks Mayella who beat her up, “‘Tom Robinson or [her] father?’” but she refuses to answer (Lee 213). Eventually, Mayella’s testimony, in addition to Tom Robinson’s, proves his innocence beyond reasonable doubt. Yet, when the jury is polled, they say, “guilty… guilty… guilty… guilty…” (Lee 240). They refuse to believe Tom Robinson simply because he’s African American, despite all the proof that he’s telling the truth, and seeing this, Scout realizes how corrupt her society is. She understands that the only reason that Tom Robinson was found guilty was because of his race and is horrified by the outcome of the trial. This shatters her childlike trust in her society, though this broken trust is later fragmented