To Kill a Mockingbird: The Loss of Innocence

Psychologist Deborah Tannen once said: “We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.” She also added that it is in our nature to do this, and from what she had said it can be concluded that this function in the human brain makes them more efficient since they will be able to see patterns. However, while this ability to separate different people into different groups based on distinguishing features of their bodies does help us in some degree, it, for the majority of times, does more damage than good, as it could be used to ignore individual’s talents and specialty, or punish them for some mistake their group has made, intentionally or otherwise. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that explores this interesting part of humanity, and reveals its ugliness, and it uses the perspective and growth of a child, Jean Louise 'Scout' Finch, to illustrate the story, which serves the purpose of showing the reader of the loss of innocence in the child as she is exposed to the horrific part of human nature that is discrimination.

One of the main external conflicts in To Kill a Mockingbird that concerns Scout is Scout v society. The reason this conflict happens is that Scout internally rebellious, and doesn’t normally follow the society standards, and thus Scout’s nature clash with societies’ expectations. This is shown initially when Scout went to school for the first time, and she disagrees with her teacher, Miss Caroline, on the subject of reading. At that time in society, children were not supposed to read, it was strange for Scout to be able to read, so she stood out in class and became a target for the teacher to discriminate and criticized her for being eligible, and telling her to start with a “fresh mind” and to try to “undo the damage” - Lee, page 23, suggesting that Miss Caroline thought that it was harmful to a child to read at a young age. There is no evidence supporting why it is harmful, yet she believes it anyway, and this is because Scout was an anomaly, and it is in most human’s nature to detest something new or different when it enters their lives, and the best way to deal with that is to harshly criticize the difference until one unification is made. Scout had to this rule of society the hard way when she spends the rest of the school year miserably: “but the prospect of spending nine months refraining from reading and writing made me think of running away.” - Lee, page 37. This was the first time Scout is exposed to the reality of her world, and with this, her senses of right and wrong are challenged by her society.

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Another one of the major contributors to Scout’s conflict with society is the unwritten rules on gender and class. As said before, Scout is special in nature, being able to read and understand books at a very young age, without any major help, and she is also very active, curious, and poorly dressed, attributes one would stereotypically be associated with a boy, and this is where the unwritten rules on gender comes in. Scout’s tomboy personality puts her under the disapproval of society, first shown in her visit to Aunt Alexandra. In chapter 9, Scout explained: “Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born;” - Lee, page 108. Aunt Alexandra is a symbol of the traditional southern woman. She is strict, and as seen in the quote, she wanted all of the people in her family to be like her, to live up to their family name, or in other words, to be an upper-class noble that does not reject the social norms. Aunt Alexandra wants Scout to be a lady because it was normal for upper-class women to be and act like ladies, and she brings Scout being her tea sets, small stoves, things that a lady should grow up with, hoping that this would be enough to influence Scout into being a well-mannered noblewoman. However, Scout does not get affected by this and instead wanted to pursue her visions on what she would want to be like. Scout wanted to be an individual and wanted to be treated like one. In chapter 24, Scout, after being beaten down by the various amount of people that scorned and criticized because of her individuality, decided to give the lady act a try, attended Alexandra’s missionary circle, while wearing a dress: “I was wearing my pink Sunday dress, shoes, and a petticoat” - Lee, page 306. This is a critical moment as it shows Scout trying out to be someone she is not, but what society wanted her to be, and then rejecting it, saying that it is not for her, and that she is more at home in her father’s world, a world where she doesn’t have to pretend to be someone else for the acceptance of others. Through this self discovery, it is made clear that although, in the end, Scout made the same decision she had made since her childhood, to be the person she wants to be, she now understands that such unwritten rules for class and gender exists and because of this, she has matured, and so does the audience, who experiences these incidents with Scout.

When discussing To Kill a Mockingbird, it is almost impossible to avoid its stance on the unwritten rules about race, since that is what the novel mainly focused on. Scout’s first interaction with racism was in school. In chapter 9, when Scout’s father, Atticus, took the Tom Robinson case and became his attorney, Scout is mocked by her classmates, like Cecil Jacobs, who announced that her father “defended niggers” - Lee, page 99. The fact that even a schoolboy is able to say the word that contains hundreds of years of oppression and pain with much ease is establishing that being racist at this time is widely accepted and is a normal thing for people to do. People at that time knew that discrimination is unacceptable, as shown in the fact that in chapter 26, when Scout’s class are discussing Hilter’s reign, Miss Gate criticizes it by saying: “That’s the difference between America and Germany. We are a democracy, and Germany is a dictatorship.” and “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecuting comes from people who are prejudiced.” - Lee, page 329. This shows the sad truth that people at that time does not even know the reality of their actions. They show empathy towards the jews since the jews were treated horribly in Hitler’s reign, but when it comes to colored people, they do not show this empathy. Only those with a clear mind and a just personality could see the hypocrisy and irony in this, like Scout. However, these are only the tip of the iceberg, as the theme of racism is mainly explored in the trial of Tom Robinson. Throughout the trial, Scout actively sees the racist bais her society takes place. Although presented with an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves Tom Robinson’s innocence, he is still sentenced to guilty from all of the twelve juries. A bystander who has little prejudice like Scout, Jem and Dill will see the obvious unfair rules and will get affected by it. At the end of the trial, Jem’s “face was streaked with angry tears” - Lee, page 285, meaning that he got so angry and upset at the trial that he cried over it, while Dill couldn’t even make it past the cross-examination. Normally, one would expect Scout, a girl, to cry to most and be the most enraged at the outcome of the trial. However, she was surprisingly the least affected, and this is because of her maturity at this part of the novel.

Conclusion

Up to this point, Scout has already experienced the accepted rules of society in being an outsider, class and gender, and has since overcome and adapted to these challenges, and she became more mature than most people her age for these reasons, but this is at the cost of her innocence. At the beginning of the novel, Scout was a naughty tomboy, who gets into fights and has no regard for what people thought of her. In the end, she did not change much in appearance, but morally, she is another person. The lessons at school and aunt Alexandra, taught her that she has a specific role to play in society, and no matter if she accepts the role or not, it is the truth and it will always be there to haunt her. For the trial, through Atticus’s actions, Scout was taught that is she should always stand up for herself and defend what she thinks is right.