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Examples Of Jem Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird

Decent Essays

There are many key scenes in To Kill A MockingBird that could be considered a “coming of age” scene. One major key scene that contributes to this is in the beginning of chapter 25. In the scene, Scout and Jem are sitting outside on the porch when Scout sees a Roly Poly . She was about to smash it when Jem told her not to. She asked Jem why she couldn’t and he told her, “Because they don’t bother you…” When Jem said this, Scout didn’t really care. She had thought “Jem was the one who was getting more like a girl every day, not I.” Jem seems to have hit his coming of age moment because in the particular scene, he seems more obvious to the world than he was before. This helps set up a theme that causing harm to the innocent is wrong until they are proven guilty of something bad. …show more content…

How the character is told and developed majorly helps the theme advance. For example, when Jem is scowling at Scout concerning the roly poly, he seems to be maturing in character which pushes the coming of age aspect of the novel. To further this, Scout thinks, “Jem was scowling when I went to mash it. This was probably a part of the stage he was going through, and I wished he would hurry up and get through it.” This shows how Scout thought he was going through some stage too, which could possibly his coming of age stage. Also, Jem tells Scout not to mash the bug, furthering the theme that I picked from the novel stating that causing harm to the innocent is wrong until proven guilty. Notably, Jem tells Scout not to mash it “because they don’t bother you.” Which pushed Scout to state, “Jem was the one who was getting more like a girl every day, not

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