To Kill a Mockingbird: Jem Grows Up

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, has won many prestigious awards and is still a very classic and appreciated book in our society today. Jem, a character in the book, grows up and realizes that you have to step in someone else’s shoes to understand why they make the decisions that they make. Once Jem saw that the knot-hole in the tree was filled with cement he started crying because he stepped into Boo Radley’s shoes. Also, When Jem learned that Mrs. Dubose had died, he stepped into her shoes and then felt sorry for her.

One way that shows that Jem grows up and realizes that he has to step in someone else’s shoes to understand why they make the decisions that they make is when he discovers that Nathan Radley filled the knot-hole in the tree with cement. He told Jem that he filled the tree with cement due to the fact that the tree was dying, when it was obviously not. Boo was communicating with them by placing gifts in the knot-hole. Jem steps into Boo’s shoes at that point and figures out that all Boo was trying to do was communicate with the children, and putting gifts in the knot-hole was the only way he knew how to without getting a lot of attention from the public. Jem knows that if he were locked up in his own house for that long, he would try to communicate and have a little fun with children that he sees playing around in the neighborhood. That is why he cries; he knows that Boo is just trying to be nice and communicate with them, and he just doesn’t understand why Nathan Radley would cut that communication between his brother and the children

Another way that shows that Jem grows up and realizes that he has to step in someone else’s shoes to understand why they make the decisions that they make is when he learned that Mrs. Dubose had died. When he was reading to Mrs. Dubose, he hated it, and he hated her for making him do it for so long. Once he learned that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, and that her fits were from it, he ate all of his bad comments about her. He stepped into her shoes and saw everything from her perspective. He knew that if he were in her position, he would have probably done the same thing.