To Kill A Mockingbird Reflection

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As children grow, their minds expand through their experiences, environment, schooling, and ultimately the choices they are faced with. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird follows the life of Scout, a young tomboy, as her father defends a black man against a white man in court over rape. Set in Maycomb County, Alabama, in the 1930s, Scout, her older brother Jem, and Atticus are faced with backlash from a racist community as the court case plays out. The experiences Scout and Jem took away from the case caused them to learn and mature as people more than anything else could, specifically school. A lesson that became apparent to Scout and Jem was the idea of seeing the world from other people’s perspective. Scout, still young and naive, gets told…show more content…
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view [...] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (Lee 39) after she gets angry with her school teacher. Thanks to Atticus, she is first introduced to the concept of misplaced feelings towards someone being caused by not knowing their perspective. The example Atticus gave her is amplified at the end of her journey when Boo Radley, the neighborhood hermit Scout and Jem once feared, saves her and Jem from being killed by Bob Ewell, a man who is considered the scum of Maycomb. As she walks him home after the event, she reflects on how Boo Radley actually saw the children and realized “Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives” (Lee 373). Throughout the proceedings of the case, Scout viewed Boo as a ghost more than a man who would do nothing but scare her or hurt her. However, when she follows the words of Atticus and looks at Boo’s perspective, she learns…show more content…
Atticus explained to her that they were not “[...] fighting the Yankees [over the case and the town’s racist views], we’re fighting our friends” (Lee 101-102). Because of the situation the Finch family were in, life for her during the court case might feel like she and her family were enemies to the community because of their stark, harsh difference in ideas with racism. Another situation where Scout gained more understanding about the grim division of society due to racism is the life Dolphus Raymond, an outcast in society due to his black wife, where he tells her “It [Raymond pretending to be an alcoholic] ain’t honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks. Secretly, Miss Finch, I’m not much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I like to live” (Lee 268). The act Dolphus Raymond must perform helps harden Scout’s perspective of racism in society because she is able to gain an understanding that racism’s harshness forces people who are not racist to adjust their ways in order to be somewhat accepted into society. Both events consequently make her gain the realization that when it comes to racism, the ideas of the racist society are much more powerful and unforgiving than anything
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