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Similarities Between To Kill A Mockingbird And John Green

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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

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