Purity Lost essays

Purity Lost essays In Harper Lees award-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, a young girl is taken from being an innocent, dependant child, and exposed to an environment of malice through her escalating awareness of the world around her. Scout Finch, the main character of this novel and daughter of Atticus Finch, goes through a rite of passage, or a loss of innocence to gain better understanding the world, by grasping that the perfect world she thought she lived in is not so perfect after all. Scout loses her childhood innocence through the realization of racial prejudice and the buildup of personal courage. Scout learns about the act of racial prejudice through the words and actions of the peers which surround her. Scouts aunts grandson, Francis, ventures to say that Atticus is nothin but a nigger-lover (83). Mrs. Dubose, an irritable old woman who lived down the street, says that Atticus is not any better than the niggers and trash he works for (102). Through the expressions and actions of her peers, Scout learns of racial prejudice and the effects it has on her community. Scout matures when she builds up courage inside of her to not take part in any kind of racial prejudice, and to finally confront Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbor. She tells Jem that there's just one kind of folks: folks (227), which confirms the fact that she takes no part in any racial prejudice of her own. When she finally builds up courage to confront Boo Radley, she realizes that he was real nice (281) instead of the monster that her childhood dreams had imagined him as. Through these events, Scout gains courage and does not give in to the temptations which plague the society which she lived in. Through these examples of adversity, Scout loses her childhood innocence and becomes more of a mature individual. She goes through tough times and eventually prevails, learning life lessons...