To Kill a Mockingbird

Maturity and change comes with age. Whether the change is due to certain events, or simply because that person has grown up and been exposed to the real world. That maturity comes from learning life lessons. Learning what is right from wrong and being exposed to new things. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch goes from a young innocent five year old to a mature, understanding young woman.
In the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout was five years old and knew of no evils in the world. She was young and just wanted to play outside and read with her father Atticus. Scout knew of things from Atticus but she didn’t quite understand them. An example of this is when her father Atticus, took a court case for a colored man. The town of Maycomb highly disapproved of this simply because the man was colored. With this disapproval came hate toward the Finch family. Scout gets in a fight with Cecil Jacobs; a boy from school; because he said mean things about Atticus, “He had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch’s daddy defended n-“(Lee 99). Neither Scout nor Cecil had any idea what these things meant but they both thought they did just to act grown. Atticus proceeds to make sure Scout understands what is going on even at such a young age. He tells her why he is defending the man even though the town is against it, “…’ The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again’ “(Lee 100). What Atticus tells Scout actually begins to mature her and she stops fighting and getting so upset about what people say about Atticus because, Scout knows Atticus is doing the right th...

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...hat they do. Using that Scout knew what Miss. Gates was saying was wrong of her and she shouldn’t have been saying that.
Atticus being involved in this case changed Scout’s view on the world and even her hometown Maycomb. The hate that was put toward her family helped Scout see things in a less hostile way, instead of letting words get to her and fighting she saw things differently. If these things had not happened Scout would have still been the same and would have matured in a different way. Scouts knowledge of racial issues changed her as well. If Atticus had not sat Scout down and explained to her what things meant she would still have the “useless” knowledge. Meaning that she would know of the things that were going on around her but, not know what they really meant. Imagine the adult Scout would have been if she had not experienced the racism of her town.