Dennis Lehane once shared the difference of sympathy and empathy stating “Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.” Harper Lee addresses this same idea within the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by skillfully embedding the importance of empathy and perspective in all aspects of life. Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird focuses on the story of a young girl (Scout) and her brother (Jem) coming-of-age in the fictional community of Maycomb, a town full of racial segregation, in the 1930’s.
…show more content…
To show, the novel portrays this theme through the Camellias, when on a rampage Jem destroys the flowers with Scout's baton. As stated on page 137, “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every Camellia bush Mrs.Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves” (137). The symbol of the Camellias and Jem destroying them help prove the theme that empathy connects to one's coming-of-age because Jem destroys the one piece of Mrs.Dubose that brings her pleasure without thinking about how his actions might affect her, which shows his mental immaturity because he doesn’t yet possess the ability to sense how someone feels without him having experienced that sort of remorse or pain first. His actions reflect this due to the fact that he doesn’t even acknowledge the negative effects of his actions until he truly starts to understand Mrs.Dubose later in the chapter/passage. To go into more detail, To Mrs.Dubose the Camellias represent her “snow on the mountain tops”, they represent her innocence and in turn pleasure and happiness in the midst of everything dark in her life and Jem the destroying them helps projects the theme because due to his inability for him to see through the eyes of Mrs.Dubose he destroys her “happiness” proving he doesn’t yet possess to ability to empathize or understand the importance of empathy. To continue, the symbol of camellias shows Jem’s coming-of-age when after Mrs.Dubose dies and she gifts him one of her camellias instead of getting rid of the flower (like he would have at the beginning of the chapter) he keeps the Camelia, stating on page 149 “Jem picked up the candy box and threw it in the fire. He picked up the Camellia, and when I went off to bed I saw him fingering the wide petals”
To show, the novel portrays this theme through the Camellias, when on a rampage Jem destroys the flowers with Scout's baton. As stated on page 137, “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every Camellia bush Mrs.Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves” (137). The symbol of the Camellias and Jem destroying them help prove the theme that empathy connects to one's coming-of-age because Jem destroys the one piece of Mrs.Dubose that brings her pleasure without thinking about how his actions might affect her, which shows his mental immaturity because he doesn’t yet possess the ability to sense how someone feels without him having experienced that sort of remorse or pain first. His actions reflect this due to the fact that he doesn’t even acknowledge the negative effects of his actions until he truly starts to understand Mrs.Dubose later in the chapter/passage. To go into more detail, To Mrs.Dubose the Camellias represent her “snow on the mountain tops”, they represent her innocence and in turn pleasure and happiness in the midst of everything dark in her life and Jem the destroying them helps projects the theme because due to his inability for him to see through the eyes of Mrs.Dubose he destroys her “happiness” proving he doesn’t yet possess to ability to empathize or understand the importance of empathy. To continue, the symbol of camellias shows Jem’s coming-of-age when after Mrs.Dubose dies and she gifts him one of her camellias instead of getting rid of the flower (like he would have at the beginning of the chapter) he keeps the Camelia, stating on page 149 “Jem picked up the candy box and threw it in the fire. He picked up the Camellia, and when I went off to bed I saw him fingering the wide petals”