Atticus Finch Coming Of Age Analysis

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What would having a feeble father do to a young, growing child? In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jeremy Finch and Jean Louise Finch are both quick learning children all thanks to their old yet wise father, Atticus Finch. Knowing this, Jem (Jeremy) wants his father to be as sprightly and out there like all the other boy’s; fathers are, little does he know that his father still has the spark in him. One of Jem’s coming of age moments is developed when he realizes something both in himself and in his father, through mood, setting, and characterization.
To set the pace, Jem begins preparing the mood with wondering why Atticus is so uneventful and not out playing football with all the other dads. P. 105 “ … he asked Atticus if he was going …show more content…

They head back into their house and alert Calpurnia of their sightings, she at first doesn’t believe them until she herself looks at the dog and determines that Tim Johnson had gone rabid. She immediately ushers the two kids inside and phones their father, Atticus and Mr. Tate, Maycomb county’s sheriff. P. 106 “Calpurnia stared, then grabbed us by the shoulders and ran us home.” This gives the setting a quickened pace. Upon seeing the rabid dog, Cal (Calpurnia) alerted the whole neighborhood and warned even the Radleys to stay inside. As Jem and Scout watched their father and the sheriff pull up and get out, they inspected the dog from afar and Mr. Tate tosses his gun to Atticus, surprising the kids, and asks him firmly to shoot the …show more content…

P. 113 “ “… I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do anything -- I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do a blessed thing.” Jem picked up a rock and jubilantly at the car house, running after it, he called back, “Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!” It took him in the long run to gather that his father, although he was elderly, could shoot a gun, something his father didn’t think highly of. However Jem and Scout throughout the course of the first 10 chapters of the novel, already knew a lot for their age of their fathers past. Revealing that his father was once called One-Shot Finch made Jem somewhat more appreciative of his father, despite his

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