Maturing Theme in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mocking Bird, the characters of Jem and Scout are portrayed as both mature and immature. By reading the novel, one can determine that both characters mature throughout the story with the help of their father, Atticus, as well as other characters within the novel.
In the beginning of the book, Jem is significantly more naïve and therefore he believes all the rumours that spread around the town about one of his neighbours, Arthur Radley, also known as ”Boo” or “Boo Radley”.
“Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: 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 was 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.” (Page 13)
Not only does he believe these rumours but he adds to them without knowing the truth. For example, when no one had seen “Boo”, people questioned his death. Jem told his sister that “Boo” had already died and without sending people in to take him away, they simply shoved him up the chimney. Several times in the novel Jem leads his sister Scout and there friend Dill into the Radley Place to cause trouble. One time they had snuck into the Radley yard to bother “Boo” even though he had done nothing to harm them. They attached a note at the end of a stick asking “Boo” to come out and they tried dropping it in the Radley’s window. After all the pranks they had pulled, one of Jem’s neighbours had told him about the myth that when little children were bad, the sky would punish them with awful weather. Feeling guilty about what he had done, Jem believed that the misfortunate weather was a result of his actions.
Although Jem is rather childish through the course of the novel, he changes his view of things and matures, When Jem and Scout meet their friend Dill for the first time, Jem realises that Dill did not want to talk about his father maybe because he didn’t have one. Jem quickly restrained himself and Scout from any further questions. Jem also learned to be patient with one of his neighbours, Mrs. Dubose, when she said bias and rude remarks about his father, the Black community and his sister. At the end of the novel, the court case makes Jem realise that although he lives in a community in which the Old South’s beliefs on life are more dominant, it is important for one to stand up for what they believe in and that his neighbour “Boo Radley” might have had his reasons for living his life indoors, hiding from the world.
Out of Atticus’s children, Scout is the more immature of the two. Since she is still young, she has not understood that fighting is not the best way to solve problems. At school when she hears one of her classmates calling her father names and without knowing what the word meant she jumped on top of him and started a fight. In the novel, Scout recognizes that her father is different compared to the other children’s fathers than she knew. Since Atticus did not have a tough job, he spent most of his time reading and that he played the Jew’s Harp, she grew ashamed of him. The author portrays Scout as more of a “tomboy” which meant that she dressed and played like a boy. Since she associated the words feminine and weak together, she refused to wear dresses and when she did, she wore pants underneath. One time Jem used this to his advantage and called Scout a girl for not going with Dill and him to the Radley Place making her follow them.
Even though Scout is immature, she slowly begins to grow up. In the beginning of the story when Jem and Scout meet Dill, Scout believed all the farfetched tales he told about his father. One time Dill made the mistake of changing his stories about his father having a beard and that he sent him a mounted police uniform which never showed up. Scout caught him lying and realised he had made up a lot of his stories. After Atticus had a talk with Scout about fighting, Scout walked away from a fight at school in fear of disappointing her father. Finally at the end of the novel, Scout regrets ever making fun of “Boo” and all the tricks they played on him. She realised that he is a nice man and that maybe he had a reason to hide in his house all the time.
In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, it is clearly shown that most people disagree and have both positive and negative views of life. It shows that even though sometimes when the odds are stacked against you, it is possible for one person to take the first step in a new direction and by teaching and leading by example, a big different can be made. Although Scout and Jem grow up in a society in which old beliefs are strong, it is possible for them to be different and learn to live a more mature lifestyle like their father.