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To Kill A Mockingbird Literary Analysis Essay

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To Kill a Mockingbird Literary Analysis

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a pivotal piece of literature when looking at women and their rights during the 1930s and how innocence of a child can be striped away by the harsh realities of life. In our novel, we meet the protagonist and first person narrator Jean Louise (Scout) Finch. Scout, being raised by a single father, is allowed to grow up “wild” during the first years of her life. When she reaches school age, however, she begins to have outside influences in her life trying to force her into societies mold of what a woman “should be.” One of the major themes in To Kill a Mockingbird is that of youth and innocence. Growing up and learning societies ways are both confusing and rough …show more content…

To her, a person is a person and who a person is isn’t necessarily right or wrong. It just is what it is. Once she begins school and her father takes on Tom Robinson’s case, her world starts crashing down around her. People begin to use the word nigger or nigger lover towards her father or their family. This bothers her and she doesn’t understand this kind of ugliness. She fights because she knows that it is an insult, even if she doesn’t understand the insult yet. She finally asks her father about it and Atticus always seems to know how to explain things so that Scout …show more content…

Whether or not being raised by a single father and an older brother had anything to do with it, Scout grows up believing that being a girl meant that she couldn’t have any fun. Girls have to be proper by wearing dresses. They can’t run around and play outside or swear. Women also don’t always say what they mean and can be catty with each other. Scout would rather hang out with the men who are blunt and say straight up what they think or how they feel about something. Eventually, Scout discovers that women can be just as courageous as men, even if she has to wear a

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