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The novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, tells of the gradual ethical awakening of Scout Finch and her brother, Jem. They become aware of their differences and learn that people and things can often be more or less than what they seem. The narrator of this novel is Scout Finch, and everything that happens is seen through her eyes, leading Scout to discover several differences and tensions with her older brother Jem.
The novel begins when Scout is only five-and-a-half years old, but she already has a complex and interesting personality. Scout’s mother died when she was two and her father is a scholarly man in his fifties who has no idea of how to play with his children or talk to them on their own level. Scout has taught herself to read at an early age, and sh
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An added difference that shows throughout the story is the distinction of gender. She wears “a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron…”(246). Elisa begins to realize that she needs something more in her life than a neat house and a good garden. ” Scout instead strives harder to be the complete opposite, and becomes confused with society’s demanding pressure for her to be a proper girl. I’ve a gift with things, all right”(247). Scout tries to give him his space but doesn’t understand Jem is maturing. Steinbeck smartly narrates this women’s frequent shifts between femininity and masculinity over a short period of time. In essence, the Finch children’s feelings toward each other have changed. She is anticipating a dreadful future in which she continues to cry “weakly like an old woman”(253). For example, Jem thinks that entailment is “having your tail in a crack,”(20) when it actually has to do with the way property is inherited. Additionally, Jem and their friend Dill develop a friendship from which Scout is excluded because she is a girl. Another example of dominance is expressed when Atticus and Aunt Alexandra are arguing over Calpurnia. Near the end of the story, Elisa asks her husband if they might go to a prizefight. Jem gets furious at Scout sometimes for acting like a girl.
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