Jem's Transformation In To Kill A Mockingbird

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During the 1930s many awful events shaped how people lived and how kids were raised. Many people say that the teenage years are the years that shape someone’s life. Children who lived in the era of To Kill a Mockingbird learned many hidden aspect of their society. In the coming-of-age novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, Jem is a boy who is adolescent during the book. The book portrays many different problems like injustice, crime and violence, and racial segregation which are subjects that everyone saw on a daily basis. Jem, is the character that undergoes the biggest transformation in the novel now that not only has he had to mature to be a good big brother for Scout but he changes physically and emotionally thanks to puberty.

To begin with, Jem shows some acts that any big brother would do. He is a kid that doesn't like to be with his little sister which shows how his mind hasn’t changed and still firmly believes how awful is to be with a sister. He doesn’t let her play with him while he plays with Dill. “They spent days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me only when they needed a third party. But I kept aloof from their more foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called a girl…”(Chapter 5) This shows how immature he was; Dill could be immature he was less educated and less well-raised that Jem, Jem was just being mean but he knew how bad he was treating his sister. It would be acceptable if Jem was just sick of all the time he spent with his sister since they went to the same school which would meant 8 more hours of being together, but in reality Jem demanded his little sister to stay away from him during school hours. “Jem was careful to explain that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not to approach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men, to embarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behind him at recess and noon. I was to stick with the first grade and he would stick with the fifth. In short, I was to leave him alone.” (Chapter 2)How bad could that be, for a sister not to be able to be with his brother, even
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Not only did he doesn’t like the way society and the court were treating Tom Robinson, but he was worried and tried to help his dad so that justice could be found. “It’s not time to worry yet,” Atticus reassured him, as we went to the dining room. “We’re not through yet. There’ll be an appeal, you can count on that. Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?” He was staring at his breakfast plate.” (Chapter 22) This could be related to how he wanted to be as his dad, a lawyer, which meant that he had to know his cases and act like him but one can see how this case affected him emotionally in a way he never had felt before. “I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: 'Guilty...guilty...guilty...guilty...' I peeked at Jem: his hand were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each 'guilty' was a separate stab between them.” (Chapter

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