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How Does Jem Mature In To Kill A Mockingbird

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In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Jem grows from a little boy to an intelligent young man. Throughout the book, he discerns many things that shape his personality. As Jem grows, he learns how bad society is and that not everyone is perfect. Fortunately for Jem, this ends up helping him and he finds out that Atticus is a hero and that he should look up to Atticus. Through Atticus and the trial, Jem loses his innocence by learning about prejudice, bravery, and that the justice system is crippled.
Throughout the book, Jem learns about prejudice and not to judge because no one is just like him and people are different. He learns most about this from Atticus. For example, when Scout comes home from school and gets angry because her teacher, Miss Caroline, doesn’t want her to read at home. Atticus responds by telling her that she shouldn’t say anything about Miss Caroline because Scout doesn’t …show more content…

After Atticus loses his trial, Jem notices that the Maycomb County justice system is broken and it needs help, “Then it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away with juries.”(294) This shows that Jem now understands that people are racist in everything and racism needs to be fought. On top of realizing that the justice system is in shambles, Jem realized that Tom Robinson’s case was very good at showing that. Knowing this, Jem concludes that the Maycomb County justice system needs unbiased people to join the jury. Here, Atticus is telling Jem that if he were on the jury, the outcome would have been different, “‘If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man.’”(294) This shows that even Atticus, a lawyer, agrees with Jem that the justice system is wrong. With Atticus agreeing with him it shows that Jem is saying intelligent things and that he is not saying things that are random and

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