Atticus Finch Coming Of Age Essay

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it (39).” Father figure, Atticus Finch, tells this to his daughter Scout when she is confused about how others act. She acts childish and critiques other based on how they act without really knowing them. She cannot help this; she is a child learning how her society works and their social norms. Harper Lee’s coming of age story, To Kill A Mockingbird, is a story about how a little girl and her brother struggle to understand their small town society and the people in it. They both go through experiences to mature them and expose them to the realities of Maycomb county. Through mentors, wrongdoings, and unequal

The children's conflict with Boo Radley and Mr. Ewell shows Scout’s coming of age. In the beginning of the novel, everything is normal in Maycomb. The adult men go to work and the women stay home. The kids play outside and the maids clean the house. What isn't normal is the creepy dark house on the street, the Radley house. The Radleys don't come to town parties and they don't come to local gatherings. They prefer to stay in their house all day. The people of Maycomb speculate that one of the Radley boys is crazy. They call him Boo Radley and they are terrified of him. They describe him as “... about six and a half feet tall; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that why his hands were bloodstained… there was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had left were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time (16). The children fear Boo. Most of this information is unreliable though, as it comes from the neighborhood gossip, Mrs. Stephanie Crawford. Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill still believe this though. There the main conflict as young children is the fear of Boo Radley. They are scared and