To Kill A Mockingbird Research Paper

There are consequences of only having a perception instead of a reality. In the novel To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, she starts off the novel by revealing some of the characters, Jem and Scout, who are brother and sister, and Dill, who is their neighbor living in a small town in the deep south of Alabama in the 1930s, where everybody knows everybody, but also a place of stories and legends from the past and the present. Throughout the novel, Lee portrays Jem as being mean and unknowing by perceiving others as monsters, but in reality, they aren’t just normal people who are different. Jem has an excellent imagination, maybe too good. Jem lives in the small town of Maycomb, and on their street lives a person by the name of Boo Radley.

There was a long, jagged scar that ran across his face. The teeth he had were yellow and rotten, and his eyes popped.” (Lee 14) Lee put this in to show the perception Jem had of Boo. Jem also says this without ever seeing Boo, which means Jem has no evidence if this description of Boo is true or all made up. Back then, nobody had any money, and the kids had nothing to play with. So Jem came up with the idea to act out Boo Radley, Mr. Radley, and Mrs. Radley with Dill and Scout. To start, “Jem parcelled out the roles.Jem, naturally, was Boo. He went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from the time” (Lee 43). Jem making and doing this game is not good because this is bullying the Radleys for being different, especially insisting that Boo shrieks and howls from under the porch, even though this is not true. Jem thinks this is what Boo Radley is really like and what he looks like, but this is just his perception. Jem decided to put his imagination to the side and focus on the reality of Boo and the type of person Boo really