Jem Coming Of Age Analysis

Coming of age is a process that comes once in everybody’s life. This process has many results such as gaining strength or getting clever. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a young boy, named Jem, gains maturity, higher level thinking, and empathy skills when he matures. To reveal Jem’s transformation, Harper Lee crafts the story in a meticulous manner and uses purposeful passages and quotes. One such passage is on pages 301 to 304. In the beginning of their conversation, Jem consoles Scout after the incident with Aunt Alexandra. However, the passage mostly focuses on Jem’s conversation to Scout. They argue about society and meanings of difficult concepts such as background. Lee uses this academic argument to establish that Jem has changed from the beginning of the story when he was childish and brash. In the passage, Lee uses the literary elements of characterization, setting, and parallelism to show Jem’s coming of age.
Harper Lee uses direct and indirect characterization to demonstrate the three facets of Jem’s maturity. At the beginning of the passage, Lee directly characterizes Jem as physically being stronger and more manly. On page 300, Scout notices that Jem is “growing taller”. Jem also grows hair under his arms and on his chest. Next, Lee indirectly characterizes Jem as being empathic. Specifically, when

For Jem, this transformation meant changing physically, mentally, and emotionally. It also meant giving in to some of society’s premeditated beliefs. The theme that Harper Lee intends to make is that coming of age, a process influenced by society and involving physical, emotional, and mental change, is mostly about being able to interpret ideas and words that don’t have clear-cut meanings. After all, everybody knows how to read a book, but it is understanding the book that is