To Kill A Mockingbird Personal Response Essay

Novel Response Reading

1. Explain a character's problem and then offer your character advice on how to solve his/her problem.

Mayella Ewell has a big problem, to say the least. She’s abused by her drunken hate-filled father, lonely and unhappy. Although her shameful indictment of Tom Robinson is unacceptable, she also is a victim of abuse, and she still needs help. If I could talk to her, I would tell her that the first thing to understand is, it’s not her fault for being abused. No one deserves to be abused no matter what they’ve done. I would tell her that there is always something that you can do when you’re being abused, even if you don’t think so. She can talk to other adults she knows, perhaps Atticus. She needs to talk to somebody, and figure out a way to get out of this situation.

2. Explain how a character is acting and why you think the character is acting that way.

Scout is acting out at school; she nearly starts a fight with a classmate (Cecile Jacobs), after Cecile said “Scout Finch’s daddy defends niggers”. And another day she cursed and beat up Francis because he called Atticus a “nigger-lover.” Scout is acting this way because she can’t stand it, that people are disrespecting and insulting her father. She’s frustrated by people’s behavior and also I would say her inability to understand why people are acting the way

I like the way the story ended, that Scout starts to explain the circumstances that led to the broken arm of her older brother, Jem, and that the last chapters of the story are of her and Jem being attacked, and coming back to how Jem has a broken arm. The book doesn’t make a return to the adult Scout for closing narration though. The novel closes with her falling asleep as Atticus reads to her. Which I like as well, I find this image of Scout as Atticus’s baby child is fitting, because while she has grown up quite a bit throughout the novel, she is still is only eight years