To Kill A Mockingbird Coming To Age Analysis

Could growing up change how you viewed the world before? Harper Lee’s novel, To
Kill a Mockingbird, shows a young girl named Scout Finch perspective towards events that occurred in her life in Maycomb, Alabama. Throughout the book, Scout goes through a path where she encounters maturity. In this passage, the literary elements characterization, external conflict and voice portray the theme of coming to age.

Calpurnia expresses her characteristics with provocative language when scolding towards Scout. Scout brings over a friend, Walter Cunningham, for dinner as an apology for brutally attacking him in the schoolyard. During dinner, Walter was pouring syrup all over his food. In addition to this, Scout was pointing out his flaws which made him self-conscious about himself. As a result, this lead to Calpurnia giving an infuriating lecture to Scout about disrespecting Walter during dinner. Scout then registers humiliation for being reproached. “Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are anybody sets foot in this house’s yo comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was all so high and mighty.”
(33) In other words, Calpurnia scolds to Scout, she mentions to make the company seem they are at home. This quote describes that Calpurnia is not the type to think differently the way we were raised since we all are human. Although her tone of voice may seem like she is unpleasant, but she’s just looking out for Scout. In this case she creates an external conflict during this scene.

Scout presents an external conflict when she forms tension around the room as she makes a remark about Walter.
In the event that she made a remark about Walter, it not only affected Walter himself but to Atticus and Calpurnia. With Scout’s intention, she obviously did not know how people would react to her comment. To put in another way, think before you speak. “Atticus shook his head at me again. But he’s gone and drowned his dinner, I protested. He’s poured it all over-”, I was then that Calpurnia requested my presence in the kitchen” (32). Significantly speaking, Atticus disapproved of what Scout was saying easily to be heard making Calpurnia eavesdropped and demanded her to come in the kitchen. It was then, Scout realizes that she had done something inappropriate to make her father, Atticus Finch not react the way she wanted him to
react.

Scout Finch’s attitude delineate in her own voice. In this novel, Harper lee deliberately uses the character, Scout Finch, to describe her childhood in her perspective. However, Harper lee wrote this when she was an adult. Since Scout is merely a child, her diction may quite be a child’s vocabulary. Rather speaking, as the novel progress, Scout’s diction is extraordinary for a child, nonetheless Harper Lee was an adult writing this. “I told Calpurnia to just wait, I’d fix her: one of these days when she wasn’t looking I’d go off and drown myself in Barker’s Eddy and then she’d be sorry. Besides, i added, she’d already gotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all her fault” (33). For the duration, Scout is

Overall, Harper Lee describes Scout’s coming of age using literary elements. The author wrote the novel to perceive her childhood during the era of racial equality. The character, Scout Finch, is put into many events leading her to maturity, Throughout the novel, Scout has major changes of her and other people’s perspective.