To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Jacob Villar

Mr. Lehr

H English 9, Period 3

December 9, 2015

Mockingbird Essay

        Throughout the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, characters judge others before even knowing what it is like to be in another person’s position. Atticus says that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around (Lee 30). This statement is a perfect example of Jem Finch’s thoughts and actions towards Boo Radley and Mrs. Dubose. Jem’s experiences with Boo Radley and Mrs. Dubose change his feelings from hate and negativity to respect and sympathy. Jem soon fully realizes that his feelings were unjust and that Boo and Mrs. Dubose are normal people.

        Jem’s perspective on Boo Radley changes from Boo being a monster, to him being a regular person like everyone else in Maycomb. Initially, Jem hears myths about Boo Radley that give him a negative impression on Boo. One myth is that Boo is a malevolent phantom whose breath froze people’s azaleas (8 & 9). Later on, some events occur that start to change Jem’s opinion on who Boo Radley is. One such event would be when Jem, Scout, and Dill are outside the Radley house, and a shadowed figure that is thought to be Boo Radley scares them off (53). Jem, who was fearful at the time, left his pants at the Radley house. However, Jem later returned to find his pants folded and waiting for him, and this makes Jem start to realize that this was Boo Radley’s doing and that he is not a monster (58). Finally Jem’s thoughts and ideas on Boo Radley become completely opposite to what it was before after he and Scout start receiving gifts found in a knot-hole in a tree at the Radley Place. The gifts included dolls, pennies, and pieces of gum. One day, Scout and Jem return to see the knot-hole filled with cement, which causes Jem to cry because he is now fully convinced that Boo Radley was trying to reach out and meet him and Scout (62 & 63). In the end Atticus’s words show how Jem wrongly thought of Boo Radley as a monster, and how over time, he begins to see things from Boo’s point of view.

        Jem’s opinion on Mrs. Dubose is that she is a nasty, racist, and cranky old woman. However, Jem experiences a similar transition from hate to sympathy as he did with Boo Radley. When Jem and Scout tried going to town by passing through Mrs. Dubose’s house, they would be “raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behavior, and given a melancholy prediction of what we would amount to when we grew up, which was nothing” (102). This caused Jem and Scout to start hating Mrs. Dubose, although Atticus tells Jem to keep his feelings inside and to try not to provoke Mrs. Dubose. The day after Jem’s birthday, he and Scout encounter Mrs. Dubose, who immediately begins to yell at the two children (104). However, when Mrs. Dubose begins to talk about how Atticus is defending a Negro in court, this stirs even more hatred within Jem, and results in him destroying Mrs. Dubose’s garden (106). After this happens, Jem is forced to read to Mrs. Dubose for a month. While Jem would read to Mrs. Dubose, she would correct the mistakes he made while he would be reading, and Jem and Scout would leave once the alarm clock went off (111). When Jem is finally finished with reading to Mrs. Dubose for a month, she tells him that he can leave. Later on, Atticus receives a phone call, and tells Jem and Scout that he is heading to Mrs. Dubose’s house. Upon returning, Atticus explains to his children that Mrs. Dubose had died, and that she was addicted to the drug morphine (114). Atticus continues, saying that before Mrs. Dubose died, she wanted to break her addiction to the drug, and this was the purpose of Jem reading to her for a month. Atticus tells him that the fits were only caused because of the drugs, and that Mrs. Dubose was the bravest person he ever knew. Jem’s thoughts of hatred soon turn to sympathy as he sees that Mrs. Dubose’s anger was not actually her, but a cause of her trying to break the addiction of morphine. These feelings make Jem realize that Mrs. Dubose was another person that he just misunderstood.