Coming Of Age Experiences In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

We all need to grow up someday to continue life. To Kill a Mockingbird shows coming of age experiences as an enormous part of this novel. It shows how things cause situations and feelings, how young adults face the reality of first-hand conflicts, and how these situations affect them. Scout and Jem undergo conditions to help them mature in the book. The encounters help them bloom throughout the novel with noticing the components and point of views involved in the situation. To begin with, the setting and the characters can change how a person feels in a situation as well as how it causes diverse events. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and Scout was starting to go to town without their father, but they always had to pass a place they didn’t
like to get to a certain destination. ”the business section of Maycomb drew us frequently up the street past the real property of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. It was impossible to go to town without passing her house unless we wished to walk a mile out of the way. Previous minor encounters with her left me with no desire for more, but Jem said I had to grow up sometime.” By having the setting be in a certain place it enables situations which make the characters avoid the place. Mrs. Dubose lives on the way to the main part of the town where Jem and Scout have to pass to get to the business section. When Jem and Scout pass by her house it enables her to talk or yell things at them. One time on their way to the business section she offends their father by saying, “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” The remark causes frustration in Jem and Scout had to make him calm.
On their way back, “We had just come to her gate when Jem snatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs. Dubose’s front yard.” He was filled with anger,”He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down.” They left immediately, with Scout telling him that he shouldn’t have done it. The setting enabled that situation because they couldn’t have avoided on their way to the business section and the person who lived there caused anger to one of the characters, which caused a diverse event that ended killing Mrs. Dubose’s flowers. There are hurdles in life and when you jump, you jump into life’s collisions.
When Jem and Scout went to the section they faced that people didn’t like their family. “Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!” She criticized Scout a trip before Jem killing her flowers. Then the next trip she said,“Where are you two going at this time of day?” she shouted. “Playing hooky, I suppose. I’ll just call up the principal and tell him!” She criticized almost everyone in their family by saying “What are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress, young lady!” directed to Scout, Then she is racist on saying that her father is no better than the n****rs he is
defending. Jem wants to make nasty remark back so his father tells him to keep his head high and be a gentleman. That wouldn’t last for long because Jem lost his cool which shows that conflicts are seen at a young age, and their father also has to deal with this too. As children grow up they learn life lessons such as, to value opinions beside their own.
Jem and Scout encounter contradistinctive prospects when they are judged for what their father does, and how they act. Scout witnesses what it’s like to see her father be considered “trash like the people he works for,” as a result of Atticus defending a black man.In a different situation Scout wants to show Cecil Jacobs shouldn’t call her parent a bad name. “and 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.” Scout is taking pressure from the trial, Mrs. Dubose comments, what she shouldn’t do. These cause her to have it decide her actions, but she notices it and tries to change it. Jem and Scout learn that Mrs. Dubose has a different perspective from theirs that hurt their feelings. Although they had a tough encounter they still went to the town, but will always be affected by
it.
When analyzing the situation, it is examined that people have diverse perspectives which decide how they act. Jem and Scout shouldn’t be judged for what their father does and that black people are equal to white people. On the other hand, Mrs. Dubose thinks that white people are better than black people since she was raised in the South. She is also going through a hard time because she is battling the stopping of morphine addiction.
Truly, coming of age themes take place in books which were written decades ago and can show variant kinds of life’s transitioning events. Including coming of age experiences, it helps us advance acknowledge distinctive outlooks. The book shows coming of age theme in setting, character, and conflict. The theme’s principles can change how a person feels, cause situations, decide how a character reacts, display what racism is like back then which could relate to today, and who is/ whom are affected by the harsh reality of coming of age situations. Rather than just seeing the coming of age in books, it can be related to the youth of today’s experiences.