A Comparison Of To Kill A Mockingbird And A Separate Peace

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When analyzing the two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the aspect of death juxtaposed the two novels from one another as their characters’ attempted to cope with it. In the two separate storylines, one novel pinpoints struggles within themselves, like how Mrs Dubose wanted to overcome her addiction and Jem’s maturation from this, versus the other through character experiences, like how Gene found himself after Finny’s passing. Although the two stories have their variances in how this is illustrated, there similarity is the contunity of the aspect of losing someone, and how it alters you as an individual.
Overall, both of the novels exhilarate different and similar examples of how characters …show more content…

For example, in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” we analyze the death of a character through self vs self combats. The predominant character in this novel that showed continuous upfront battles and decision making within herself was Mrs Dubose, the Finches neighbor. Throughout Maycomb county, Mrs. Dubose was known as being a roten and racist old woman. Besides her horrible reputation and meaningless gossip, she was also noticeable from her morphine addiction later in the storyline proved to be the cause of her shortcoming. In her attempts to become clean, her accusations to not let the drug kill her were profound too late. In quotations from chapter 11, “‘She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s exactly what she did’” (Lee 127). As shown, Mrs Dubose was simply trying to overcome the obstacles she once suffered, and died knowing she was doing it for the better. In contrast, the main character Finny dies as an innocent in “A Separate Peace.” He was known to bring nothing but happiness and positivity to others, and that’s …show more content…

The deaths in both novels caused characters to grow within themselves. In relation to the first travel, the world renown “coming of age” moment was shared between Jem and his white camelia, after Mrs Dubose had given it to him. This delicate flower served as a literary device within the novel to convince readers how this one change had altered his perspective on life. Similarly, in for Gene in regards to Finny, we see Gene’s real perception of him grow and renew into something beautiful after he is gone. In reference to the second novel, “levels of reality I had never suspected before, a kind of thronging and epic grandeur which my superficial eyes and cluttered mind had been blind to before. They unrolled away impervious to me as though I were a roaming ghost” ( Knowles 12.30). This summarize through the two similar experiences, the two characters reached a level of maturity and realization from the several stages of dealing with loss. As demonstrated in both novels, the aspect of death serves as a comparable and distinguishing aspect in both stories. Through the differences of overcoming this occurrence, from how each character perishes during this time, death serves as a major contributing factor to the development of characters in both

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