A child is cared for a nurtured by his or her parents until a certain point in their lifetime where aging and maturing becomes a prime focus. Things change, and with that, so do people. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee and the book Looking for Alaska by John Green, the main character Scout and Miles have to go through the transition from childhood to the years of being a teenager. Both kids are forced to mature and take on more responsibility as they experience less comforting and nurturing from people who once protected them. In both of these books, as the children age, they must resort to more mature ways of living, experience new responsibilities, and leave their youthfulness and innocence behind. Throughout To Kill …show more content…
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout begins her years at school. She also has to learn how to deal with people of the town being rude towards her father and her family because of what he’s doing to help Tom Robinson. After Jem explains to his father what had happened when Mrs. Dubose was saying rude things about Atticus, the book says, “‘Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for n_____s, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable” (Lee, 138). Scout must deal with the problems given to her by townspeople. John Green takes a different approach at experiencing new responsibilities in Looking for Alaska as Miles attends his new boarding school where he must become accustomed to the new teachers, assignments, people, and social norms. Miles must take on the schoolwork and business of the school as he is also adjusting to the social groups and the unwritten rules of socializing between the students. These new responsibilities and difficult times happen to everyone as the grow up. When a child is maturing into more adult-like ways of life, he or she must also be prepared for new and harder life …show more content…
In Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout discovers how hard it is to lose someone significant when her friend, Dill, goes back to another town when the summer is over. Readers can understand that Dill misses Scout when the book explains, “The fact that I had a permanent finance was little compensation for his absence: I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill’s eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days” (Lee, 154). While Dill is away, Scout does not get to see or physically speak to the boy who she cares for deeply, leaving a lasting impact on Scout. In Green’s novel, Looking for Alaska, Miles loses all forms of communication with Alaska, a girl he had very strong feelings for, when she is killed in a car accident. This experience was very troublesome and traumatic for Miles because he was with Alaska that night, but was never able to say goodbye to the girl he
In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, readers are able to see the ways in which Scout, Jem, and Dill learn valuable life lessons as they progress throughout the story. The book is narrated by Scout, a twelve-year old girl, who takes part in many adventures with her older brother Jem ranging from games at the house of their neighbor, “Boo” Radley, to witnessing her father, Atticus Finch, defend a black man, Tom Robinson, from being wrongfully accused of rape. While many may argue that To Kill a Mockingbird should not be taught in class, the values taught by the characters help to argue that it should be taught to classes.
As people grow in life, they mature and change. In the novel , To Kill a Mockingbird ,by Harper Lee, Scout, the main character, matures as the book continues. Slowly but surely, Scout learns to control her explosive temper, to refrain from fistfights, and to respect Calpurnia, their maid, and to really learn her value to the family. Scout simply changes because she matures, and she also changes because Atticus, her father, asks her to.
"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." A quote by Atticus Finch a loving single father of two children in a novel by Harper Lee. The story takes place during the 1930s and the Great Depression, in a small (made-up) town called Maycomb Alabama. Scout now an adult is narrating what she experienced and felt in ages 6-9. She gives details of her family, school, and just everything she goes through. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, she also talks about her brother Jem, who starts as a careless young boy that slowly starts getting more mature. Jem changing throughout the story helps show a little bit more of how the story develops and why character development is important in making a good novel.
She would get a better understanding of this as the novel progresses. Scout also learns more about maturity when she experiences hypocrisy from her teacher, “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Pre-ju-dice,” She is contradicting herself, saying that it is acceptable to persecute blacks but not Jews. It dawned on Scout that people are hypocrites and have double standards when it suits them. The biggest step the children took towards growing up was during the Tom Robinson trials. There, the children received full exposure to the evils, malevolence, prejudice and sorrow of the cruel world as a white man accuses an innocent black man for raping when all Tom ever wanted to achieve was to help others. The children understood what was going on completely and was therefore changed because of it. At the unexpected climax of the novel, the children have an unpleasant encounter with Bob Ewell who wanted to take revenge on Atticus for humiliating him by killing his children. This was an absolutely outrageous act of insanity but also taught the children how dangerous reality could be, finalizing their journey into adulthood.
Anne Frank once said “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, it is a bildungsroman novel that follows Jem Finch as he grows up in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Over the course of several summers he, along with his sister Scout , face obstacles and challenges which consist of their mean old neighbor Ms.Dubose and the recluse Boo Radley. Although, in the beginning of the novel, Jem still is a child physically and mentally, and we witness him mature and grow up. We see Jem deal with problems that arise in a more mature manner. Lee shows that even someone as childish as Jem can grow up and learn to
As baby steps transform into bounding leaps, one must understand how to lengthen their stride mentally as they do physically. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee eloquently describes Scout and Jem’s journeys over the course of a few years that, in turn, cause them to mature individually as well as a duo. Their progressions as characters allow the reader to label the novel as one of maturation. Numerous experiences contribute to their growth and understanding of the world around them. Along the way, Scout and Jem learn to put themselves in other people’s shoes, that one should never kill a mockingbird, and that an individual should continue to fight regardless if they know that they are destined to lose.
In To Kill A Mockingbird, advances so does the factors that influence a character’s moral growth; all the characters in the book matured from the experiences they encountered. Scout, which is one of the characters, matured in positively in physical ways. At the beginning of the book Scout was told she was to much like a boy. The reasons she was like a boy is because the way she dressed, played, and acted. After that the book progresses and by the end of the book Scout is acting more like a lady.
No one stays a child forever; eventually, everyone will grow up. It is the process and the way of finding yourself in the real world that makes everyone’s story different. In To Kill A Mockingbird, the author, Harper Lee, clearly emphasizes how important the transition into adulthood is. The world can be a scary place for an innocent child who does not yet see it with maturity. The loss of this innocence is known to be sinful in the eyes of the residents of Maycomb, Alabama, where the ugliest problems, such as racism, are an everyday occurance.
Children sit in school for eight hours a day for at least twelve years in their lives, learning how to read and multiply. However, children learn the most important lessons in life outside of the classroom walls. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout and Jem discover powerful lessons about life through their father, Atticus, community and experiences. They view an unjust trial of a black man against a white woman, and find that the world is cruel and that they must treat all people with respect. They judged and bothered their neighbor Boo Radley, but he later saves the two of them. Through this, Scout understands not to make assumptions about people until she gets to know them. Also, through Scout’s experiences in school, she finds that
As people get older they go through experiences in their life that can change them in bad ways or most of the time change them in good ways.This good change occurs usually by the experiences teaching them important lessons they should know in life.These changes are very important in ones life because it matures them into an adult. This transformation happens to certain characters in every novel and it is called coming of age. In the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, both Jem and Scout go through this coming of age and learn what it means to be courageous, the unfairness of the world, and to look at other people's perspective before judging them.
Walt Disney once said, “You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway”. These words describe the clear coming of age and how there are diverse audiences to take into consideration when making a large judgement. Relating to the novel, Scout is experiencing a coming of age moment while learning to deal with different types of people and accepting the fact they will have their own way of thinking. After Scout experiences a bad first day of school she makes the decision to not go to school anymore, however Atticus teaches her that she should not let one person’s view on something put her down, that they might be raised differently that her, and that she should still respect their differences.
When many people are children, their parents, grandparents, or anyone who poses as a parental figure tell them that they will become more mature with age. However, psychological maturity is mainly learned rather than simply accompanying a person’s ascent into adulthood. Inevitably people grow, but this statement proves the experiences a person has in their life, whether good or bad, will change the path he or she takes while growing up or even continuing his or her adult life. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jean-Louise “Scout” and Jem Finch are six and ten in the beginning of the book, respectively. Although they gain only three years by the end of the novel, the children develop even more mature mindsets than many of the physically grown-up people in the town. Three events that prompt this early maturation are a conversation that takes place between Atticus and Scout, Tom Robinson’s death, and the ordeal with Mrs. Dubose.
It’s interesting to see the ways different authors depict how a character matures. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird we can easily see how she chose to do it. The novel is set in Alabama in the 1930’s, while black vs. white racism was a big issue and problem for many. Atticus is the father of Scout and Jem, young children who witness the discrimination first hand when their father, a white man, defends a black man in court. Lee does a great job developing the characters; especially the narrator, Jean Louise Finch (Scout). Scout’s thoughts, conversations, and actions, illustrate that she’s emotionally maturing from the innocent child that she was.
A childhood of a youngster begins with a seed their parent plants. With utmost care and love, the seed comes to bloom just as their little one would. They learn to stand on their own and grow as tall as they can. As time goes by, fruits begin to grow in the tree and experiences begin to fill the child’s life. They start with being sour, then sweet, lastly bitter. Similar to how the child would pave the way through their childhood into the dark realities of life. The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, outlines how with age and experiences comes knowledge, the realization of life’s harsh realities, and the wisdom and understanding after trials. Scout Finch, the protagonist, experiences many of life’s ups and downs as well as
Many books and stories demonstrate the maturing of children by experiencing what life beyond childhood is and how that affects their relationships and behavior. The stories To Kill a Mockingbird and the Silver Star best show the effect of growing up through experiencing the realities of life. To Kill a Mockingbird shows the maturity of a young girl named Scout who lives during the Great Depression when her father takes the job of defending a black man. Even though The Silver Star does not take place during the depression it still shows the maturity of two girls (Liz and Bean) when they become involved in a major court case in their new, small town. A comparison of the two books shows how the ideas of children are affected by the people around