Similarities Between Birches And To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch begins her journey from childhood to her teen years. In her journey, we watch as she starts to learn to basic lessons of life and becomes more mature chapter by chapter. In the poem “Birches”, Robert Frost writes about the quiet Birch tree bowing In the breeze after an ice storm. He also describes how a young boy learned his life lessons from being a swinger of birches. These two literary works convey how every childhood is different, but the end result is almost always the same.
Scout was 6 years old when the story began. Just like any 6 year old, her days included games with her brother Jem and waiting for her father Atticus to return home from work. Her and Atticus would read after dinner almost every night. When you live “too far from town to learn baseball” you have to come up with different ways to play. For the boy in “Birches” that was swinging from the birch trees in the woods. Scout was an interesting young lady going through her childhood phase. Just like the young boy from “Birches”, they each struggle to find things to keep themselves occupied.

Childhood is about those moments when you have to entertaining yourself. Those moments actually define your personal creativity. Neither Scout or the young boy lacked creativity. Scout would always find someone to talk to or play with, and the young boy found his people in the woods.
Robert Frost says, “When I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.” Scout’s own curiosity got the best of her multiple times in the the story To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Radley house, just down the street from Scout’s, was the beginning of Scout’s curiosity and imagination. The stories she was told and the little things she didn’t see fed her curiosity during the whole story. The Radley’s are like the bent over birch trees for Frost. The curiosity of “some boy’s swinging trees” eats the man alive in the story and makes him think back to his own childhood. Scout’s curiosity ends with her in awkward situations. Like the time Atticus caught the three children; Scout, Jem, and Dill at the courthouse during Tom Robinson’s hearing. “ “Curiosity always kills the

cat.”
Snow to one person might just be exactly what it is. Snow to someone like Scout is a whole different story.
“The world’s endin’, Atticus! Please do something--!” said Scout as she dragged him to the window and pointed.
Atticus replied, “No it’s not, it’s snowing.”
For someone like Scout, snow is a frightening thing. It makes your hands cold and burn when you pick it up. It can also be wet and slippery. “Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.” For the boy in “Birches”, snow and ice meant some good swinging and fun times with himself. For both kids, snow meant fun new experiences.
Every childhood is different for every kid. The fun games and memories made will always be there to cherish later on. But the lessons you learn as a kid always stick with you. Scout learned may things from Jem and Atticus throughout the book. The biggest lesson she could have ever been taught was before making a judgement, see it from the other person’s perspective. Atticus was good at seeing things from different points of view since he was a layer. Scout finally realized that life lesson at the end of the book when Boo Radley saved her and Jem’s life. All the ghost stories about the Radley’s were just stories and not the truth. Frost says, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” Scout may be young and still has many things to learn, but she could be doing worse in life than she is now.