In her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee describes the maturation of the protagonist’s brother, Jem, as he grows up in Maycomb County, Alabama, a town controlled by racism and hate. Over the course of the book, he faces several obstacles and challenges that cause him to let go of his naive mindset as an innocent ten-year-old and directly deal with the inherent discrimination among individuals in his community. Therefore, Lee’s novel is an example of a bildungsroman, or a book dealing with one person’s formative years. Jem’s transformation gives the reader an insight into the beliefs he values and how they change during his adolescence.
Young and impressionable, Jem’s ignorance of the lives different people in society lead relates to …show more content…
Having been forced to deal with hate and anger demonstrated by various people, others’ thoughts and actions have influenced how he now views the world. As he consoles his younger sister, who still believes in the best in everyone, he explains to her that “there’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes” (258). Like others in his community, Jem is ranking others based on their status, as he attempts to understand the different behaviors and attitudes people show towards each other. Jem does not play with Walter Cunningham, a poor child at school, because his Aunt Alexandra has told him not to associate with “trash… picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what” (256). After seeing colored people rejected by white folks, he assumes that they must be at the bottom of society. These responses differ from the opinion of his younger sister, who, still untouched by the hate in their community, states that “there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (259). The reader can recognize that although Jem originally had this mindset, believing that all people in the world are good, he slowly begins to grow up and starts drawing his own conclusions regarding his treatment of other people. Therefore, the change in Jem’s behavior towards the individuals in his community and how he acts around them has marked his development during the course of a few
Young and impressionable, Jem’s ignorance of the lives different people in society lead relates to …show more content…
Having been forced to deal with hate and anger demonstrated by various people, others’ thoughts and actions have influenced how he now views the world. As he consoles his younger sister, who still believes in the best in everyone, he explains to her that “there’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes” (258). Like others in his community, Jem is ranking others based on their status, as he attempts to understand the different behaviors and attitudes people show towards each other. Jem does not play with Walter Cunningham, a poor child at school, because his Aunt Alexandra has told him not to associate with “trash… picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what” (256). After seeing colored people rejected by white folks, he assumes that they must be at the bottom of society. These responses differ from the opinion of his younger sister, who, still untouched by the hate in their community, states that “there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (259). The reader can recognize that although Jem originally had this mindset, believing that all people in the world are good, he slowly begins to grow up and starts drawing his own conclusions regarding his treatment of other people. Therefore, the change in Jem’s behavior towards the individuals in his community and how he acts around them has marked his development during the course of a few