Examples Of Empathy In To Kill A Mockingbird

One cannot truly empathize with others “until [they] climb into [other’s] skin and walk around in it” (Lee 39). This inability to empathize is due to the fact that minors are self-centered and often only consider themselves, so they are unable to relate with other individuals and their struggles. This absence of empathy is a direct result of a lack of maturity. When Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in the 1950s, humanity, as a whole, lacked empathy. Sadly, racism was a cruel yet common part of everyday life. Whites had no concern or care for any black people. Black people were treated as animals. This directly correlates with the manner of which the children in the novel treat the other characters. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird,

Harper Lee promotes the theme that as children mature they become more empathetic through the use of literary elements.
Harper Lee opens the novel with the subplot of Boo Radley in order to portray how naive children do not comprehend other’s struggles.

Subsequently, the narrator, Scout, along with her witty brother, Jem, and her adventurous pal, Dill, often treat others like animals. When trying to get their mysterious and shy neighbor to emerge from his house, they attempt to slide him a note attached to a fishing pole. The first time they treat others like animals is when “[they] are going to give a note to Boo Radley”(62). They choose to ostracize Boo instead of aiming to understand his experiences. Harper lee demonstrates how Scout views other by incorporating Boo Radley’s subplot. This subplot directly correlates to the main plot where a black man, Tom Robinson, is dehumanized by those who do not understand, nor care, about his circumstances. Thus, Lee wants the reader to understand that naive children, who have not matured, do not attempt to empathize with those who suffer. Furthermore, the children break Boo’s wanted privacy by “put[ting] the note on the end of a fishing pole and stick[ing] it through the shutters”(62). Boo is shy and does not want to come out. Wrongly, they are too afraid of Boo to give it to him in person; instead, they have to give it to him as far away as possible due to their wrong, accusatory, and ignorant belief that Boo is a ravenous monster. The fishing pole is a symbol for imbruting and dehumanizing innocents, such as Boo Radley. Harper Lee

utilizes this symbol as a literary element in order to depict how wide-eyed and undeveloped youths misanalyze outsiders. Furthermore, at this age Jem, Scout, and Dill gullibly believe lies about Boo without any regard for his own life and experiences. As soon as Dill rings the bell to signify that he sees somebody “[Scout] reel[s] around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead [Scout] saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus’ face”(64). This provides a conflict of the children getting scolded for being rude to Mr. Radley and the universal conflict of children being nosy and disobeying rules. This conflict displays the immaturity of the children because they are still pursuing their foolish, ignorant, and childish schemes. Similarly, their lack of empathy and understanding is due to their innocence, proving that immature and naive children treat others as animals and monsters because they have not developed empathy.
As the novel’s plot develops, so does Jem and, later on, Scout.

There are several points in the story where Jem has grown to become a responsible young man and Scout is still juvenile girl. Scout is uniformed of what coming of age is; thus, she is unaware of why Jem is maturing. She thoroughly believes that Jem’s newfound intellect “[is] probably a part of the stage he [is] going through, and [Scout] wishe[s] [Jem] would hurry up and get through it” (320). Scout is disappointed when Jem gives up his childish plans and accepts adulthood. It is hard for her to no longer have an immature companion to carry out their foolish schemes. Harper Lee uses Jem as a character in order to show this process of how empathy arises with maturity. Furthermore, Lee uses these differing levels of empathy in order to juxtapose and contrast juveniles to developing adults.Scout still has no regard to other’s lives, but sympathy has emerged from Jem. For example, Scout was trying to smash a roly-poly but, “[her] hand [is] going down on [the insect] when Jem spoke[,]... ‘Don’t do that’”(319). Even though the bug may be insignificant to Jem, he still cares and tends to the roly-poly while Scout is under the impression that it’s life is small and unimportant. All the facts considered, Lee juxtaposes contradicting ages to illustrate that more mature individuals tend to be more empathetic. Only a few pages later, Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly convicted of rape, gets shot in prison seventeen

times. When his dedicated wife finds out the bad news, she is utterly devastated. Dill reports back that when she found out about Tom’s death “she just fell down in the dirt… like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her”(322). Immaturity and crudeness killed Tom. Harper Lee uses parallelism in this passage to represent how unempathetic the court is and connect it to the similar rude gestures that the children display. There is also parallelism between the related insects of an ant and a roly-poly. The ignorance put upon the innocent, which is represented by the roly-poly or ant because of their miniscule size, is given by an undeveloped human, such as a child. Ergo, Harper Lee further justifies that before youths are sophisticated enough to stand other’s difficult endeavors, they do not feel empathy for those who struggle.
As it has been noted, blindly disregarding individual’s suffering in something very common among children for they have not matured yet. Empathy is something that flourishes in a soul once they cease treating others as animals, scheming, and making assumptions about others. Smash others like a bug also is childish, but maturity will help children grow out of these tendencies. When Lee wrote this in during the Civil Rights Movement; at this time many white people would never mature, leading to the persecution of blacks. Without maturity, there can be no empathy. Without empathy, there can be nothing but oppression.