Scout's Development
No one can really understand how another feels until they take a walk in their shoes. This along with many other life lessons are taught in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird, where some characters achieve the ability to walk in each other's shoes. The novel takes place in Maycomb County, Alabama, where social conflicts occur in the world of a young girl named Scout Finch. As the story develops, Scout goes through steps that make her grow emotionally. Her growing is associated with the struggle of prejudice and the achievement of understanding others. As Scout grows she learns of the prejudice in her town and it helps her develop as a person. Scout witnesses her own family members prejudging her father, Atticus. Scout's cousin Francis says to her that her father is a "nigger-lover" because he is defending the case of Tom Robinson. He adds more to it by saying how it will "ruin the family,"(83) but Scout answers with, "I don't know what you're talking about."(83) Scout obviously does not understand the term, but soon learns the meaning of it from Atticus. She is aware of how Atticus defending the case causes ignorance and accusations to stir up in Maycomb County. She is exposed to how society harshly judges other
Scout grows by going through steps that make her fully apply the lesson of understanding others into her own life. Scout fails to understand her teacher Miss Caroline, a newcomer to Maycomb County, unaware of the people, tradition and the way of the town. However, Atticus teaches a very valuable lesson to her and says that one can never understand someone "until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."(30) There are always mistakes in a learning process. Scout makes her mistakes and is naive and oblivious of how there will always be different people in her life who won't know everything that she may know. Atticus teaches her to view the situation from Miss Caroline's point of view, thus taking a walk in her skin. Scout loses her innocent thoughts as she realizes some of the harsh truths of the society around her. Scout is mindful of the racism of the town by the verdict in the Tom Robinson case. She knows that a jury usually never looks at a defendant that they find guilty and she notices how "not one of them looked at Tom Robinson"(211). Though she thinks that Atticus did well during the trial, and has a good thought of what the verdict was going to be, she ends up learning how a white man would always win when it's their word against a black man. She learns an
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Approximate Word count = 867
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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