To Kill A Mockingbird Jem Character Analysis

When you think of an older sibling, they tend to come across as bossy, mean, and overprotective, but they really have good intentions. Jem, a character in the story To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is the brother of the main character Scout, and the son of Atticus Finch. Throughout the book, he plays a major role in the novel and is a very important aspect to the theme. Jem shows his imagination, bravery, and his love for his sister. Jem, as any young boy has quite an imagination. During the summer after Scout starts school, Dill (Scout’s lover) comes for the summer. The topic of who lives across the street came up in one of their conversations. Boo was then mentioned and Dill asks what Boo looks like. “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained-- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. 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). Nobody has ever seen Boo in a very long time, way before Jem was alive, so this description comes from his imagination.
Jem is also very brave for his age, he stands up to his father,

On their way home from the Halloween pageant at their school, they hear a mysterious sound. They make it out to be footsteps but think it is just a classmate. As they walk the more frightened they get and the more they don’t believe it is their classmate. The mysterious sound then turns into running footsteps. “He was running, running, running toward us with no child’s steps. ‘Run Scout! Run! Run!’ Jem screamed” (Lee, 351). Jem’s love and respect for his sister are made clear when he warns her and tries to save her, even if that means not saving