To Kill A Mockingbird Quotes Growing Up

Looking Up No Longer

Growing up as a child with a mindset of only wanting to be bigger always seems very slow. However, when we are finally at that grown up age, it seems like it happened so rapidly and all we want is to go back, to that naive state where nothing can go wrong. In Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mockingbird, growing up is a sometimes subtle, but a very frequent theme that carries the plot along and shows what society was like in the 1930s. Harper Lee focuses on “growing up” being a difficult but important time because it’s an unavoidable part of everyone’s life that changes much about how they see the world.

Scout grows quite a bit over the course of the book; her views on herself, others, and the world around her come to change dramatically. As scout is getting into fights at school with almost everyone who does her wrong, Atticus forces her to stop and be more ‘ladylike’. This turns out to be a bit of a struggle, especially when Atticus takes on the Tom Robinson case and people start to call him a n***er lover. Scout’s quote emphasizes this point, “‘You can just take that back, boy!’ This order given by me to Cecil Jacobs, (...) My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus promised me he would wear me

Both Jem and Scout shift from wild, naive children to sensible and sophisticated young adults. They both come to many of the same realizations about what it means to be grown up, but the way that they encounter such understanding is much different. This theme is an important concept to grasp for everyone because from experience, many people either don’t understand or remember what it’s like to be young. Whether it’s because they don't remember, or think it’s different than when they had to grow up, it should still be an idea people think