To Kill a Mockingbird Essay First Draft

Anthony Wang

English

Ms. M

1/6/2015

To Kill a Mockingbird Essay First Draft

        The classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird is a great American story about the injustices against black people during the 1900’s. In the story, Jem goes through many changes because she is between the ages of 10-13 throughout the story. During these changes, Scout, Atticus, and Dill had the greatest impact on his coming of age because of the closeness of all three, and the advice and knowledge that is passed to Jem from these characters throughout the story. This closeness, advice, and knowledge given to Jem assisted his coming of age throughout this novel.

        Of the many characters that affected Jem’s coming of age his father, Atticus, had a large role to play.. He was one of the characters that influenced Jem the most because he was a person who knew justice and had a strong sense of morality. In the book there is a paragraph that shows his personality, “But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Chapter 11 page 144. This paragraph shows that Atticus was a reasonable person. There is another example that he treats everybody equal, “Atticus, nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything—like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some 1page 139. As a dad he influenced his son Jem a lot, in the second half of the story Jem learned everyone is equal, no matter of your skin color. Atticus belief in justice and equality helped form Jem’s opinions and coming of age.

        The second important character who influenced Jem was Scout which is Jem’s little sister. She was a tomboy and an intelligent and insightful person. In the book there was a sentence showing Scout’s smartness, “Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch. Jem says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was born and I’m really a-” Chapter 2 page 23. This sentence shows that she can read in very young age, and she just learned when her dad read the book for here. Scout was smart, so her brother Jem learned a lot of thing from her for example, Scout "I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." Jem “"If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... " This sentence shows that Jem got inspired from Scout, and understood something new. Scout helped Jem to learn how to be a man and made Jem’s mind grow.

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