All children everywhere begin life innocent and without prejudice. It is as they grow and develop that their individual experiences of life sculpt and shape their personality. To a child, the world is an amazing place. They are on a constant search for knowledge and are incurably inquisitive. They see adults as figures of authority and generally accept their word as the truth, as their naivety does not allow them to comprehend lies and deception. However, children can be as cruel and selfish as they are innocent. Material possessions are of great importance to them and they will frequently disregard other people’s feelings in pursuit of their own interest, often acting before considering the consequences. This inability to understand the complex repercussions …show more content…
Scout narrates as an adult, looking back on a difficult three years of her childhood. The novel is set in her home town of Maycomb, where she lives with her older brother Jem, father - Atticus - the local lawyer, and black housekeeper
Calpurnia. Problems for the family begin when Atticus takes on the defence of Tom
Robinson, a black labourer accused of raping a poor white woman. The town’s people are outraged at his decision to defend Tom and do their best to make life difficult for the Finches. As the trial approaches, racial tensions mount and the children are subject to many insults and abuse by their ignorant peers. Despite
Atticus's efforts, Tom is convicted and sent to prison, where he is shot trying to escape. Although this is the main plot of the novel, there are several more trivial, yet no less important issues which Scout and Jem are concerned with during the story. The house next to theirs is occupied by a strange family, the Radleys, and rumour has it that Mr. Radley's son lives locked in the basement. The children nickname him 'Boo', and with their friend Dill, they spend days trying to make him come out. Everyone in
Maycomb knows about him, and are all highly suspicious of the
The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, takes place in the 1930s in a small Alabama county called Maycomb. The novel is about the Finch family of three. Atticus, the father, Scout the older brother and Scout the younger sister, who acts like a tomboy. Scout may be a lady, but does not like to act like one, she likes to play and get dirty with her brother. Being young, both children learn lessons throughout the novel by many different residents, such as, Calpurnia, the maid, Miss Maudie, the neighbor, and their father, Atticus. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird various citizens in the town of Maycomb play an important role in the lives of Jem and Scout Finch
In addition to being a lawyer, Atticus enjoys being a father to Jem and Scout. When Jem and Scout found out that their father would be defending a black person, they knew immediately that there would be much controversy, humiliation from the people of Maycomb and great difficulty keeping Tom alive for the trial. It was not long when Atticus had to leave the house very late to go to jail, where Tom was kept because many white people wanted to kill him. Worrying about their father, Jem and Scout sneak out of the house to find him. A self-appointed lynch mob has gathered on the jail to take justice into their own hands. Scout decides to talk to Walter Cunningham, one of the members of the mob. She talks about how her father Atticus thought that "entailments are bad "(154 ) " and that his boy Walter is a real nice boy and tell him I said hey"(154). Upon hearing this, the mob realized that Atticus cannot be all bad if he has such a nice daughter as Scout. Atticus, with some unexpected help from his children, faces down the mob and cause them to break up the potential lynching of the man behind bars. Having gone to a black church earlier, the children found out that Tom is actually a kind person, church-going and a good husband and father to his children.
Even though, this novel was set in the depression era, Scout goes through times in her life when she learns moral lessons through the education taught by Atticus, this results in empathy being shown and Scout also learns to fight with her head rather than her fist. However, as she faces hardship and goes through difficult times, seeing as her father is defending Tom Robinson (who is a black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell), she is forced to grow up and enter the adult world. As this is the case, Scout finds herself helping Atticus and this increases the relationship between father and daughter since Scout sees her father as a good role model. Even though Atticus isn’t seen as an ordinary father he is still seen as role model by his children, this implies that he must have done something right to make them approve of him. In comparison to Mr Ewell, Atticus is seen as a role model as he doesn’t smoke or drink. These bad habits that Atticus has refrained from have had an impact on the way his children have been brought up. Unlike Bob, Atticus cares for his children and tries to help the...
Scout Finch and her brother Jem live with their widowed father Atticus in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. The book takes place in a society withstanding effects of the Great Depression. The two main characters, Scout and Jem, approach life with a childlike view engulfed in innocence. They befriend a young boy named Dill, and they all become intrigued with the spooky house they refer to as “The Radley Place”. The owner, Nathan Radley (referred to as Boo), has lived there for years without ever venturing outside its walls. The children laugh and imagine the reclusive life of Boo Radley, yet their father quickly puts a halt to their shenanigans, as they should not judge the man before they truly know him. Atticus unforgettably tells the children, “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.”
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the story of the struggle of a white family facing discrimination for defending a black man. Scout and Jem are two young children living in Maycomb, believing that everyone is like their father, Atticus, who embodies justice and equality. Atticus takes on the case of defending Tom Robinson, a man who is being charged with raping a white woman. Before the trial, the Finches are forced to withstand torment from the townspeople. Their beliefs are shaken when a black man is given a rigged trial and he is innocent.
Loss of Innocence in Killing a Mockingbird Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather, the streets turned red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. " (Lee 9). This environment, as Scout Finch accurately describes, is not conducive to young children, loud noises, and games. But, the Finch children and Dill must occupy themselves in order to avoid boredom.
While the second part is about the trial of Tom Robinson. In the first part of the novel, Scout along with her brother Jem and her friend Dill investigate the mysterious life of their neighbor, Boo Radley. Boo has not left Boo Radley is the next door neighbor of the Finch’s. He is an outsider of the community, because he does not leave the house. He got in some trouble as a teenager, so his father locked him up inside the house.
Children are utmost naive during the times when they are not soiled by the darkness that society
In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the story of coming-of-age and the loss of innocence through the character Jem. Through recurring events, Jem is faced with the realization of society’s injustice, and is left questioning the world he lives in. During a time of rampant racial discrimination and prejudice in the south, Jem transforms from naivety to maturity.
The illusion of innocence is deeply instilled in the outlook of children. Reality soon takes its grip as kids begin to grow and mature, and they lose their pure qualities that they have once possessed. Their father Atticus shelters Jem and Scout from the town’s disease, teaching them the act of sympathy and how to distinguish the good aspects over glaring at the imperfections of people. The loss of innocence portrayed in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is exposed as the lives of Jem, Scout, and Dill go through their racist and prejudice society, learning how the worlds dreamlike qualities is nothing more than just a childhood fable. The children’s judgment of people and society quickly sheds as Lee displays the harsh realities to Jem, Dill,
To Kill a Mocking Bird is narrated retrospectively from the view of Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch a lawyer of Maycomb, and younger sister of Jem. The informal vocabulary of the narration is still good enough to suggest it is spoken from the view of an adult Scout, (looking back at her childhood) but is casual enough to be understood by most readers.
The film particularly focuses on a white family living in the South of the United States in the 1930s. The two siblings, Jem and Scout Finch, undergo major changes while experiencing evil and injustice in their small town of Maycomb. Jem and Scout’s father is named Atticus and he is a well-respected man in the town as well as being a lawyer. The main plot of the story is when Atticus decides to work on the case of a black man, Tom Robinson. Mayella, the woman defending against Robinson, comes from a low income and low educated family, making them a poor family.
English AT3 An individual’s identity is shaped by many factors; therefore it is always changing in response to experiences in life. How people act, feel and how they perceive their surroundings and themselves can influence change in identity. It can be defined to be set characteristics by which and individual is recognised or known as by others. It is often seen that when people who have confronted a traumatic experience, they need to adapt to find a new sense of self in order to assimilate that experience and move beyond it.
Scout Finch, the youngest child of Atticus Finch, narrates the story. It is summer and her cousin Dill and brother Jem are her companions and playmates. They play all summer long until Dill has to go back home to Maridian and Scout and her brother start school. The Atticus’ maid, a black woman by the name of Calpurnia, is like a mother to the children. While playing, Scout and Jem discover small trinkets in a knothole in an old oak tree on the Radley property. Summer rolls around again and Dill comes back to visit. A sence of discrimination develops towards the Radley’s because of their race. Scout forms a friendship with her neighbor Miss Maudie, whose house is later burnt down. She tells Scout to respect Boo Radley and treat him like a person. Treasures keep appearing in the knothole until it is filled with cement to prevent decay. As winter comes it snows for the first time in a century. Boo gives scout a blanket and she finally understands her father’s and Miss Maudie’s point of view and treats him respectfully. Scout and Jem receive air guns for Christmas, and promise Atticus never to shoot a mockingbird, for they are peaceful and don’t deserve to die in that manner. Atticus then takes a case defending a black man accused of rape. He knows that such a case will bring trouble for his family but he takes it anyways. This is the sense of courage he tries to instill in his son Jem.
To Kill a Mockingbird revolves around a family living in a small town in the midst of the Great Depression and times of racial tension. Scout Finch is a quirky and bright young girl that lives with her younger brother Jem, and her widowed father Atticus who is a lawyer. Atticus is one of the few men in town who stands up for racial justice, and throughout the story instills morals of justice and fairness in his sharp minded children. When he takes on a case of a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, Atticus shows his children what it means to be just, even in the face of the unsupportive town members.