Loss Of Innocence In Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

Coming of Age is a series of events in a person's life in which they transition from a childlike view on the world to a deeper, matured perspective on society as a whole. Ultimately, coming of age not only impacts a person's perspective of how our world functions, but it also influences a person's actions and words.In Harper Lee's profound novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the aspects of loss of innocence are portrayed through the perspective of a young girl's thoughts and ideas.Scout and Jem Finch, two young children who live in the dull town of Maycomb, spend endless time with their friend, Dill Harris over the summers. As the children mainly use their time to spy on the Finch’s neighbor, Boo Radley, who they dehumanize to be a monster, their

For Example, when the children practice shooting air-rifles in the yard with their Uncle Jack (Atticus’s brother). “When he [Jack] gave us our air-rifles, Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit'em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee 119). Scout rarely hears her father talk about anything being a sin, as he was not a deeply religious man. When Scout hears her father say it it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, it conveys to her that mockingbirds are blameless animals, as later explained to her by Miss Maudie, her neighbor. The mockingbirds can be perceived as innocent because they do not work against people, but they work for them.The Mockingbirds look to help people in the way of singing. Later, Miss Maudie explains that Mockingbirds sing for people, but the unlying reason that the mockingbirds sing is to give hope. The motif in the passage is the Mockingbirds, the mockingbirds symbolize a vulnerable, clean-handed but also less powerful person because Mockingbirds do not look to disrupt others but help them, as explained before, through singing. As the

In this passage, Scout talks about the gossip that has been floating around school: “With these attributes, however, he [Atticus] would not remain as inconspicuous as we wished him to: that year, the school buzzed with talk about him defending Tom Robinson, none of which was complimentary” (Lee 119). The passage portrays that Scout sees the gossip and racism of the town more vividly, due to her father being as prominent as he is. Lee uses this passage to foreshadow the court case, in which Jem loses his innocence when racism and injustice are revealed to him. Because Scout views her school as being bound together by the rumors of racism and injustice surrounding Tom Robinson’s case, it leads her to alter her mental image of her father into a hero who fights for justice. This also foreshadows ahead to the court case, because when her father loses the case it presents a whole new set of factors that work to change her mental image of her father. As Scout forms a broad image of her school companions in her head, her childish view on society as a whole begins to distort to matured perspective.Scout references back to a fight she had with a boy named Cecil Jacobs, “After my bout with Cecil Jacobs when I committed myself to a policy of cowardice, word got around that Scout Finch wouldn’t fight anymore, her daddy wouldn’t