Scout- A Dynamic Character

To Kill a Mockingbird Essay
Scout Moving On At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent five-year-old child who has no experience with reality of the outside world. As the novel goes on, Scout is learning about the harsh world that is around her by all of the events that are happening that has to do with racial prejudice. People throughout the book, even her family, approach her and make crude and slanderous remarks regarding her father representing a colored man. The grounds on which she dynamically changes is centered around whether she will learn that humanity can be evil and how she responds to that. When Scout was encountered by the first few people saying that Atticus was a “nigger lover” she started to beat them up on the spot. Without even knowing what a “nigger lover” was she felt that she needed to stand up for Atticus and that was how she was handling the situation. Throughout the book Atticus teaches her that there is no excuse for beating the people that said that. Thanks to Atticus’ wisdom she learns that there truly is some good in all people and that she has to be calm and civilized towards all people. At the end of the book she tries to make right with one of the people that she beat up and tries to have him over sometime after school. Another way that Scout dynamically changes throughout the book is her attitude towards Aunt Alexandra. Scout detested how her aunt was always trying to change her ways to grow up into the lady that Aunt Alexandra wanted her to be. Throughout the course of the novel she stops complaining about spending time with her aunt and starts acting more like a lady without realizing it.

Thanks to Atticus’s wisdom, Scout learns that though humanity has a great capacity for evil, it also has a great capacity for good, and that the evil can often be mitigated if one approaches others with an outlook of sympathy and understanding. Scout’s development into a person capable of assuming that outlook