Maturity And Irresponsure In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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In Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mockingbird Jem and Scout are negatively influenced by Dill, a dynamic character who represents childhood. As Dill comes over during the summer Jem and Scout are pressured to do childish things that exhibit immaturity and irresponsibility. The peer pressure from Dill effect Jem and Scout’s decision making process, and pushes them to commit rebellious acts that go against Atticus’, their father, moral values and teachings.

To Kill A Mockingbird first starts with a flashback of the event when Jem was thirteen and broke his arm, the narrator (Scout) and her brother Jem recall the series of events that lead to his broken arm. Jem who is older than Scout by four years said “It began the summer Dill came” (Lee 1). Dill
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When Dill hears about the legends and stories about Boo Radley he is very fascinated about it all, “The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder.”(13). This parallelism is used to emphasize how much curiosity builds up in Dill, that makes him obsessed with making Boo come out. At first Dill dares Jem to touch the Radley 's place, “ He’ll probably come out after you when he sees you in the yard, then Scout’n’me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can tell him we ain’t gonna hurt him”(16). Dill’s imagination and curiosity leads him to daring Jem to do the dare and he pressures Jem by calling him scarred. When Dill’s plan doesn’t work they come up with another plan, they come up with sending Boo Radley a note through a broken slat in a window. The idea is to use a fishing pole to lower the note into the window, keeping their distance from the house while also being inconspicuous. Dill waits by the road with a bell to ring if anyone comes along to catch them. However they do get caught by Atticus, and he tells the children to leave him Mr.Radley alone and stop tormenting him. Atticus uses the metaphor to explain to Scout, “How would we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking, when we were in our rooms at night?”(54). This metaphor is used by Atticus to emphasize and teach the kids that privacy is the right and choice of people, and that it is not fair to bother and intrude someone who wants to be left alone. Atticus strongly believes on treating everyone the same and loving everyone, this is an other way he teaches his kids about moral values they must respect everyone 's choices and decisions. This is the

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