Remember the days spent dancing with imaginary friends, tea parties with stuffed animals who could talk, then going to bed with the boogie man under the bed? The novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about Jem and Scouts journey through their youth as they work to deal with tough subjects such as rape, racism, and the realization that the world is not how they once viewed it. Throughout the story, Lee demonstrates the loss of childhood innocence, which shows that one's true perspective of the world is obtained through maturity.
To begin with, all children experience innocence in their youth, but as they grow up, their understanding of the real world betters. Early in the novel, Jem and Scout perceive Boo Radley as a “Malevolent Phantom”. Jem tells Scout that, “‘Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained -- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he
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. . .Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”(281; ch. 31)
Lee tells readers that Scout has “finally” matured enough to understand the real meaning of life, in this case knowing who the real Boo Radley is. After Boo saves them from Bob Ewell, Scouts perception of Boo as a monster changes. She realizes he is a “nice” person who had just been a victim of her innocence. The loss of innocence closes the door of their own imaginary world and opens the door up for the actual world.
In conclusion, during the duration of the novel, Harper Lee portrays that a lack of maturity, causes innocence, making them oblivious to reality. Childhood innocence is a huge factor of growing up and a recurring theme throughout the novel. The familiar feeling of being a child, when days were spent carefree with minds running wild. However, with age, those memories seem to slowly fade