The Theme Of Empathy In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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To Kill A Mockingbird: Mini Report No two people are the same. You may know their name but not their story. Until you have walked around in their shoes, you don’t truly know them. This is a well learned lesson by Scout on the first day of school, “ Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham, for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen it was an honest mistake on her part,” (Lee, 30). To walk in someone’s shoes refers to the term empathy. Empathy is, “the ability to comprehend another person’s actions and emotions, the identification of thoughts and emotional states within others,…show more content…
In contrast to this, the personality trait of a person that is incapable of empathizing with others would be defined as a sociopath,” (Planet of Success, Developing Empathy: Walk a mile in someone’s shoes). This is an important concept in real life, such as in the book, because it helps us to avoid judging people too harshly without justified reasoning. The people of Maycomb seem to have forgotten what this word means when they decided that Dolphus Raymond was an alcoholic because he had half-Negro children and drank out of a brown bag. You don’t truly know someone until you have walked in their shoes. You may not know that the girl with the brightest smile cries herself to sleep at night, or the boy in the back of the class with his headphones in just lost his brother. There are people in every school who will laugh at the girl and tell her that she has no reason to smile because no one likes her. Or maybe they will call the boy a loser for sitting alone at lunch. These people are the most pathetic students at the school, for they are unable to…show more content…
Each person has misfortunes in their life. “Tom’s dead,” (Lee, 235) or, “Bob Ewell’s lyin’ on the ground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs. He’s dead, Mr.Finch,” (Lee, 266). The families of these men have suffered misfortunes because of their deaths, whether it be losing someone they loved or losing the person who put meat on the table. No one may know that people are suffering, but they are. It is important to be kind to those around you because you don’t know what they are going through. “ My dad is active military and was deployed for most of my younger years,” (Stories From People Like You: Curtis) says Curtis, a kid who was bullied because he moved and switched schools frequently. Curtis also said, “Life was an awful thing to live everyday and there are so many times I wanted to quit. Just end it all.” No one knew that he was suffering and chose to push him down instead of getting to know him, and because of this he wanted to take his own life. It is important to walk in other people’s shoes, as to understand what they are going through and to not
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