To Kill A Mockingbird Theme Essay

To Kill A Mockingbird has several themes, but to me the one that stands out the most is growing up and how your perspective on things change as you age. I feel that young readers today can still align with this theme because as you get older your opinions, actions and thoughts do and should change based on your experiences. Throughout this essay I will be citing some specific examples to support my thesis.
One of the main characters in the story is Scout. Scout is the narrator of the whole book. She is the daughter of Atticus the lawyer. At the beginning of the story, Scout is depicted as sassy and impulsive. For example, when Walter Cunningham comes to school without any lunch and Miss Caroline offers to give him money but Walter would not accept it. Scout stepped in and stated “Walter’s one of the Cunningham’s, Miss Caroline” (Lee, 1960, p.26). Scout then goes on to continue to explain what she thinks that Miss Caroline should already know about Walter and his family in a very

Even though all the all the evidence proves that Tom was innocent, he was found guilty. The events leading up to the verdict are symbolic. You can see how Scout has grown in that she can sense the changes in the courtroom while they are waiting for the verdict. She compares the feelings she has to “a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still” (Lee, 1960, p.281). She went on to describe how she “saw something that only a lawyer’s child could be expected to see” (Lee, 1960, p.282). She went on to describe that she knew that a jury never looked at the defendant it had convicted. She noticed immediately that no one on the jury looked at Tom as they came back into the courtroom. Being able to sense something like this shows how mature and experienced Scout had become over the course of the