Scout's Evolution: From Judgement to Understanding

Throughout the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout, a young girl and the narrator of the story, judges others. As the book progresses, being influenced by her wise lawyer of a father Atticus helps her slowly become more understanding of others and see things differently than the way she used to see them.

In the beginning of the book, Scout is a categorizer. While playing with her brother Jem and her friend Dill, she starts to talk about their neighbor Boo Radley. Even though she’s never seen him, she assumed he's dangerous and crazy because of exaggerated rumors. It occurs again when she is in class for the first time, and young boy named Walter Cunningham is offered money from the teacher because he doesn't have a lunch. Scout gets

This starts when she approaches Atticus to ask him what the N word means. Atticus tells her not to use the word because it's not a nice thing to say to African Americans. Along with this, there were incidents of Scout fighting classmates like Walter Cunningham and Cecil Jacobs. “...My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I was far too old and big for such childish things”(pg. 85) shows that Scout has begun to have moral growth. Scout and Aunt Alexandra had very different visions of what a women should look like. They fought a lot at the start of the book, but after a while, Scout matured and started to listen to Alexandra, who taught her what Maycomb's vision of a proper

She steps in his shoes and looks at it from his point of view, something she wouldn't have done if she was younger and not raised by Atticus and his influencing morals. When Calpurnia, their African American maid, takes Jem and Scout to her church to see her community, the kids were surprised to discover that Calpurnia "led a modest double life... outside our household” (pg 158) in words of Scout. Scout doesn't know any black people outside of Calpurnia, so when she sees the other blacks in her church, she notices that the way they live is completely different from the way white people live. However, she still treats them the same as she would anyone else. She talks “two different languages”(pg 158), something Scout admires, especially because she didn't know that about Calpurnia.

Scout starts off her early years as a categorizer, who thinks she knows it all. Later, she goes from judging others because of their reputations, to looking at things from other people’s perspective, something Atticus taught her. As the book moves on, she grows up and learns about Maycomb’s societal norms. Most importantly, as Scout grows her morality, she becomes able to see the goodness in all human beings, even the flawed and evil