To Kill A Mockingbird Research Paper

Growing up, little life lessons that we are taught from adults do not always seem as important as they truly are to our lives. We learn many lessons from our parents and peers that affect our future selves. This real-life concept happens in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This novel, published in 1960, is about life in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. The first half of the story is about three children attempting to get their mysterious neighbor Arthur “Boo” Radley to come out of his home, and the second half is about the children’s father Atticus Finch and his defense of an innocent black man named Tom Robinson. The children in To Kill a Mockingbird learn numerous life lessons, including: life is not always fair, to remain calm and civilized when things do not go your way, and that people are not always what they seem.

Scout and Jem had only heard rumors about their neighbor, “Boo” Radley. The children had heard rumors, such as, “...he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained...There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drolled most of the time.” At the end of the novel, “Boo” Radley saves the Scout and Jem when they are being attacked by Bob Ewell, and Scout realizes that he is a good man and the rumors are not true. At one point in the story, Mrs. Dubose, a hateful and opinionated neighbor to the Finches, upset Jem enough to compel him to destroy her camellias. For punishment, Jem and Scout go to her house every day for a month, except for Sunday, and Jem is forced to read to her. The two children see that Mrs. Dubose has fits while she is asleep and when she passes away they learn that she was a recovering morphine addict, and Jem’s visits with her was only helping her quit her habit, which was a goal she had before she