White Camellia's Purity In To Kill A Mockingbird

White Camellia’s Purity

Within history, there are few texts as iconic as To Kill a Mockingbird. The author, Harper Lee, makes this novel iconic through profound character development, and intricate symbolism. The feature character, Jem, is associated symbolically with football, spying, and white camellias. Although young boys aren't usually associated with flowers, after killing his neighbor, Mrs. Dubose’s, flowers in a fit of rage, she gifted him a white camellia, a symbolic transfer. According to the web blog ”Fresh Trimmings,” “White camellias symbolize purity and innocence.” The gift of the perfect white Camellia from Mrs. Dubose to Jem represents a transfer of the strength needed to face adversity and the purity of heart needed for Jem

Mrs. Dubose’s fight against her morphine addiction, before her inevitable death, shows Jem real courage, through the purity of the white camellia. Jem destroys Mrs. Dubose’s white camellias because she calls Atticus a [n-word] lover. As a result of this offense, Jem and Scout have to read to Mrs. Dubose daily. Multiple weeks into this punishment, Scout realizes, “It suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a little longer at Mrs. Dubose’s, that the alarm clock went off a few minutes later every day, and that she was well into one of her fits by the time it sounded” (Lee 113). This quote reveals that Mrs. Dubose has been pushing the alarm clock back, but only having her lack of morphine-induced fits at the end of the session. These reading sessions, which result from the destruction of White Camellias, have been helping Mrs. Dubose reduce her dependence on morphine. This is symbolic of the purity of the Camellia, helping to guide Mrs. Dubose during her battle with morphine. Upon the news of Mrs. Dubose’s death, Atticus reveals to Jem, “Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict,’ said Atticus. ‘She took it as a pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent the rest of her life on it and died

After the guilty verdict in the Tom Robinson trial, which distressed Jem a great deal, He asks his father, “How could they do it, how could they?’ ‘I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep” (Lee 216). In this passage, Jem is questioning how possibly they could deliver a faulty verdict. Atticus, who acts as the wise man in this novel, reveals that only children weep after blatant racial injustices, alluding to the idea that children are pure. The future of the next generation is brighter than the last, with an individual only being corrupted in a later stage. This is reinforced when Atticus says that if the jury was 12 children, justice would have been served. Reflecting on her childhood at the end of the novel, Scout remarks, “Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him” (Lee 279). The children have their hearts broken by the racism of the town and are endangered by said racism, but then are saved by one of their own. Jem is a symbol for the children of the town, who provide a better future because of their inherent goodness, demonstrated through the symbol of the White camellia. In one of the most powerful moments in the novel, the children are referred to as “Boo’s children.” Boo is a symbol of the fight