Theme Of Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

Innocence and maturity comes with experiences and not with age. One’s childhood innocence is never lost, it simply plants the seed for the flower of maturity to bloom. It seems that almost every adult chooses to either forget or ignore this childhood vulnerability. But ironically, it was this quality that pushed them into adulthood in the first place. At the peak of their childhood, their post climactic innocence allows room for the foundation of maturity to to grow. Harper Lee gave an incipient meaning to it by portraying Scout as the leading character. Her conceptions and perspectives was transmuting as she surmounted challenges and the quandaries she encountered. Integrating more to her description, she is ignorant about Maycomb’s disease.

According to the Maycomb residents, Boo was a monster. Due to their description, even Scout has posits definition for him, “There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” (Lee 16). Atticus Finch one day visually perceives the children playing the game. He asks them if it has anything to do with the Radley family; the children lie to their father and verbally express that the game is not predicated on Boo. Once he leaves, they continue to play the game. Surprisingly, later throughout the story, they learn that Arthur Radley is genuinely a benevolent man. He leaves the children gifts in a little tree-hole from time to time; however he ceases doing so suddenly for his brother fills up the tree-hole with cement and blocks him from the outer world. Also, Tom Robinson's case is a drastic shift in Scout’s behavior and maturity. Gradually, she learnt about the disease and the racial prejudice towards black people. The name itself is trying to indicate something about racism that in the novel, Mockingbird is Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Both of them had an immense amount of influence on

"He was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning against the wall when I came into the room, his arms down and across his chest. ....His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind....as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's image blurred with my sudden tears." (Lee 270). This quotation states how Scout had a fresh incipient perspective about Boo Radley. This is when Scout commences to understand and accept Boo as a neighbor and friend, rather than just as a character in a ghost story. Also, the misconception she had for Boo, was vanishing. She was the one who figured out that Boo Radley was the one, who preserved her from Bob Ewell. Gradually, she interplays around innocence and maturation by hitting the most consequential events in the novel. However, this is not the only evidence which shows her maturation but her witnessing Tom Robinson’s case, also have remarkable impact on