Characters grow and develop and allow us to become a part of their lives in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee. This is true because the story is told from the perception of a young girl called Scout. We get so close to Scout because the whole story is told from her point of view. We share her experiences as she would go through them, we are with her when some of the most important events in her life happen to her, life changing events that can change a person, like being attacked by Bob Ewell and watching her father defend Tom Robinson in court.
We learn everything she learns, like why the E wells and the Cunningham’s live the way they live and why Atticus defended Tom Robinson in court. In only the first few pages of the book we learn so much about the town of May comb and the people in it, through Scout’s narration. As the book progresses on, we see her grow up and mature, and begin to understand things that she didn’t understand in the beginning e. g.
her neighbor Boo. In one of the first few chapters Atticus tells Scout that ‘you never really understand a person until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ When he told her this she didn’t understand and take on board what he meant. As the story develops we witness all the events unfolding leading to her standing on Boo Radley’s front porch and fully understanding what Atticus had said. It is here that we realize that Scout has changed and now has different views of the town and the people in it to what she had in the beginning of the story.
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Jem also grows and develops as a character by the end of the book. We get close to Jem in the story because being Scout’s older brother, he is always with her. Jem is ten in the beginning of the story and the story continues until he is thirteen. He starts out very curious and always asking questions (not as much as Scout though) but he is older. We also witness him go through the same life changing events as Scout, but he has a different perception of them, like when Mrs.
Dubose dies, it isn’t a big deal to Scout, but to Jem he learns what real courage is and that is undoubtedly what starts to change him from a boy to a young man. In this change he becomes silent and moody. In this part of the book we lose the closeness with Jem, because Scout is still a child to him so they are not together so much anymore. However because we know why he has changed and is still changing, we remain a part of his life.
We get to know Atticus a lot through the eyes of Scout and Jem. He talks to them continually and expresses his own personal views of everything to them, so through this we become quite close to him as a character e. g. when he explains why he had to take Tom Robinson’s case. We learn things about him as Scout and Jem do, like when he shoots the mad dog, Scout, Jem or us as the reader didn’t know that Atticus was so competent.
The characters grow and develop and allow us to become apart of their lives in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ We are with the characters when their lives change, when they learn new things, when they grow up. When life-changing experiences happen to a character in a story, you see it from their point of view, you are them and then you become close to that character, because you live that story as they are living it. Its like Atticus says in the book ‘You never really understand a person until you get inside their skin and walk around in it.’.
