To Kill a Mockingbird 5 chunk essayEnglish 10 Mr. Steele 9. 25.
03The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a book about twochildren, Jem and Scout, growing up in the south during the greatdepression. During the course of the story, they meet many people. Jemand Scout develop perceptions about the people they meet, some of which aretrue, and some of which turn out later not to be true. Some of the peoplethey are wrong about include Boo Radley, Mrs.
Dubose, and Atticus. At the beginning of the story, Boo is introduced as someone thatScout is afraid of. Jem and Dill get very curious about him because theynever see him, and so they start getting closer and closer to the house. Atticus tells Jem to stop terrorizing Boo, but he and Dill keep on playingthe games. Jem ends up almost getting shot by Arthur Radley because He andDill go to the Radley house at night.
As Jem is running away from thehouse, he gets his pants caught on the fence. He runs away without thembecause he is scared of being shot. He goes back later to get them, andthey are folded over the fence, as if someone knew he was coming back. This is one of the first times that you can see that Boo may not be themonster he is made out to be.
Another time is when they find the trinketsin the tree. At first they don’t know it is Boo but they finally realizethat he is the only person that could be doing it. The final event thatmakes Scout understand Boo is when he saves her life, and then after shewalks him home and while she is standing on his porch, she sees her andJem’s life through Boo’s eyes. She realizes that he feels very close tothem because they are the only people he sees most of the time, and that heis not a monster at all. Mrs. Dubose is another person that is not what she seems to be atfirst.
Jem and Scout think that Mrs. Dubose is just a mean old lady thatsits on her porch all the time. When they pass her house every day, sheyells insults at them. Because of this, Jem and Scout think of her as amean old lady who likes to insult them. One day, Mrs. Dubose calls Atticusa “nigger-lover” and Jem gets really mad about it, and cuts down Mrs.
Dubose’s flowers. As a punishment, he has to read to Mrs. Dubose every dayfor a month. Scout and Jem find it disgusting to have to be near her. Afew days after Jem finishes his punishment, Mrs.
Dubose dies. Atticus andScout are not particularly sorry for her, but Atticus tells them the realstory of Mrs. Dubose. He tells then that she is addicted to morphine, butinstead of giving in and taking it, she refuses to take it and it makes hervery sick. That is the reason that she is so mean.
Atticus also tellsthem that even if Jem had not destroyed the flowers, he would have madethem read to her, because even though he disagrees with Mrs. Dubose’sopinions on some issues, he knows that her resistance to the drug is anexample of real courage. Atticus is another person that turns out not to be like what heseems. Scout and Jem think that he can’t do anything, and are jealous ofother people’s parents because they do things like play in a town footballgame.
Scout talks to Mrs. Maudie about it, and she tells him all thethings he can do. A little later in the book, Scout and Jem find out thatAtticus is the sharpest shooter in a all of Maycomb county. Scout feelsguilty about thinking that her father couldn’t do anything. Then, near theend of the book, Scout realizes how good of a man her father is. She istold how he is the only man in Maycomb who will “be a Christian” when it isreally needed, because he is the one standing up for what is right when noone else will.
Scout then knows how much more she loves her father thanshe would the fathers of her peers. Throughout the book, Scout and Jem judge a lot of people by what theylook like or act like when they first meet them. In the case of theirfather, they make assumptions about him based on years of living with him. A lot of the beliefs they have about these people turn out to be wrong.
The way they look at those people change, not because the people havechanged at all, but because of some event that caused Jem and Scout to seewhat they are really like. In our everyday lives, this happens all thetime. People are judged because of their appearance or attitude, and theyare not really like that at all. If someone dresses in black and wearsspikes then other people look at them, think “oh he’s a goth” and neverfind out any more about that person. If they only met the person, theymight like each other and become good friends.
However, that can’t happen,and it’s all because of someone being judged. If people didn’t judge eachother, everyone would be happier and would have more friends.
