In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ written by Harper Lee, the author has used numerous different methods to portray the themes of innocence, maturity and growing up. These themes were put in so that the audience could become more empathetic towards the characters, especially the protagonists. She depicts these themes through characters, events, using symbolism, imagery and contrast located throughout the book. Firstly, Harper Lee shows the themes of innocence, maturity and growing up through the main characters of the novel.
Due to this particular theme, the two main specimens would be Jem and Scout. Both these characters start as innocent, carefree and typical children until the dire events unroll, they start to lose their purity as they start to understand the real world. This loss of innocence is Harper Lee’s method of allowing the reader to observe the changes in Scout and Jem, as she transforms them into adults with adult qualities. Atticus teaches Scout to be empathetic towards people.
Atticus attempts to make Scout grow up; “Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting anymore; I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be”. Jem learns to treat everyone equally, as he would want to be treated. It can be seen when he realises the cruelty of society when he says; "I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seems like".In addition to the previous thought, Lee also portrays these ideas through the events that occur throughout the book, route of passage of the children. This journey represents the path from innocence to maturity, the world in which they grew up in, to the cruel, evil, outside world. The children’s first sign of maturity was when Atticus said “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".
This caused Scout to think from the victim’s point of view, something that narrow minded Maycomb folks could not do.She would get a better understanding of this as the novel progresses. Scout also learns more about maturity when she experiences hypocrisy from her teacher, “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced.
Pre-ju-dice,” She is contradicting herself, saying that it is acceptable to persecute blacks but not Jews. It dawned on Scout that people are hypocrites and have double standards when it suits them. The biggest step the children took towards growing up was during the Tom Robinson trials.There, the children received full exposure to the evils, malevolence, prejudice and sorrow of the cruel world as a white man accuses an innocent black man for raping when all Tom ever wanted to achieve was to help others. The children understood what was going on completely and was therefore changed because of it.
At the unexpected climax of the novel, the children have an unpleasant encounter with Bob Ewell who wanted to take revenge on Atticus for humiliating him by killing his children. This was an absolutely outrageous act of insanity but also taught the children how dangerous reality could be, finalizing their journey into adulthood.Harper Lee also represents the themes through key symbolism. The most important symbol and the one that represented innocence and goodness was the mockingbird. Tom Robinson, Boo Radley and even Atticus and Scout were the metaphoric mockingbirds in the novel.
When Scout asked Miss Maudie about the reason it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, she replied; “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
” This reinforces the link Lee is trying to create between the theme of innocence and the mockingbird.Near the end of the novel, Scout thinks that hurting Boo would be like shooting a mockingbird, this shows a high amount of thought and maturity especially from a child. Boo is an important symbol of the good even in the most unsuspecting people. Even though he has gone through incomprehensible amounts of suffering and is almost ridiculed by all of Maycomb, he still goes out to save the children, presenting the ultimate symbol of goodness.
Lastly, Lee uses contrast to allow us to further explore these themes.She compares good with evil, law with chaos (prejudice), innocence with reality, for us to have a better understanding. At the start, Harper Lee makes Jem describe Boo as “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 blood stained – 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”.
In contrast, Boo was actually a kind hearted person, shy, gentle with most ttributes of a gentleman. He was depicted as a monster because of the prejudices in Maycomb. This also shows the journey that Jem took towards maturity, his childish beliefs marked his innocence and throughout the plot he starts to open his mind about Boo, acknowledging the bias opinion that Maycomb held, accepting that he might not have been who he thought he was. In conclusion, Scout and Jem growing up, maturity and loss of innocence can be seen throughout the novel, transformation from innocent children to a mature person as they watched the events happening around them.They learned to examine the world around them, how society works and looking deep into people, knowing the facts first before making any judgment on them, and to accept people as they are.
These are the values that Atticus has taught and passed on to them. They were immature at the beginning at the novel but as they faced and gained understanding about life lessons such as prejudice, hypocrisy, racism, injustice, dishonesty, they finally grow up in the end to be more tolerant and accepting of all people.
