Theme Of To Kill A Mockingbird Coming Of Age

As people grow up, they notice that society contains many inequalities. Being exposed to these inequalities and realizing other harsh truths causes people to mature. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, uses plot events, conflict and resolution, character development, setting, and symbolism to convey this theme of coming of age. A major element that helps with Harper Lee show the “coming of age” theme is the unique plot/events. Scout had many events that happened in her early years that caused her to mature. One way Scout matured was when her teacher told her she wasn’t allowed to read at home anymore. Scout demanded to stay at home and not go back to that school but Atticus reasoned with her. In the book, Atticus states, “First
One of the main conflicts that can be seen in this book, is between Scout and how society wants her to behave. It can be seen multiple times, including the scene where Scout’s teacher finds that she is able to read: “after making me read most of My First Mobile Register and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste” (Lee 22). In this quote, the author reveals that Scout knows how to read, yet most of her peers cannot. The school system, which is representative of society, does not want Scout to be able to read when she has not been formally taught how to do so by the school. This conflict is never fully resolved, so Scout just accepts that her teacher does not want her reading. The lack of a resolution to this conflict also reveals that the author thinks that, as people learn of problems with society, they also find ways to ignore them, which causes people to mature. Scout learns that this behavior is normal and that only a handful of people don’t ignore problems when she talks to Miss Maudie after the trial. “We’re the safest folks in the world… We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us” (Lee 288). In this quote from Miss Maudie, Lee reveals that people in this community
In To Kill a Mockingbird, the setting of the small town of Maycomb, Alabama is often described as being sleepy and slow. Partially since it is in the south, and partially that this novel takes place in the 1930s, Maycomb is a town with a serious racial division. When Scout and Jem visit Calpurnia’s church, Scout briefly describes the church as “an ancient paint-peeled frame building”, since the people that attend have little to no money to fix the church (Lee 157). The harsh words used to describe Calpurnia’s church show the cruel separation between the races. The Finch’s home is described in much nicer words, complete with a porch swing (Lee 68). Scout was also predisposed to the idea of extreme poverty. The Ewell family lived “behind the town garbage dump” and was built with “sheets of corrugated iron” and “shingled with tin cans hammered flat” (Lee 227). This obvious difference in setting between what Scout is used to viewing to what the rest of the world is like first introduces her to the harsh realities of the adult world. At a very young age, Scout sees what extreme conditions others have to live in. This realization implements a very mature concept in a very immature mind of cultural and monetary differences between people in a very close knit