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To Kill A Mockingbird Theme Analysis

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Gail Sheehy once said, “If we don’t change, we don’t grow up. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” Losing something close to us is the key to growing up, and Scout, the protagonist in To Kill A Mockingbird, is one of those characters. Scout and several other characters in the novel lose their innocence as they begin to see the prejudice and racism of the 1930’s South. All of these characters were innocent and unaware of what Maycomb was, and their innocence was taken away from them because of that. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee relates the theme of growing up and loss of innocence. One of the ways Harper Lee relates to the theme is through mood and tone. Harper Lee wrote the book divided into two parts: Part One …show more content…

This is similar to how kids and even small pets get into small things out of curiosity, things that are often kept away from them. Scout, Jem, and Dill were acting like normal kids and they didn’t worry about racism or any of the events that was going on in the town. Scout goes around with her brother, Jem, and her neighbor Dill as they figure out more about Boo Radley. Overall the mood is very exciting and vivid in Part 1 of To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee shows the change in growing up in Part 2 of To Kill A Mockingbird. In Part 2, the chapters are written darker and are more intense than Part 1. During these chapters Scout and Jem have to deal with the racism in town of Maycomb as the Tom Robinson case begins. One of the ways Harper Lee shows the intensity of Part 2 is in the scene where the mob shows up at the courthouse. “...I glanced around and discovered that these men were strangers. They were not the people I saw last night ...I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I have never seen before” (Lee 152). This shows that Scout didn’t know what she was getting into, she didn’t know that the mob was there to kill Tom Robinson. The way Scout jumped into the stand out with the mob and didn’t know anything about what was happening is similar to children when they try to join into adult conversations. The mood of the whole situation here is suspenseful and almost frightening because

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