P4+KHamilton

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The novel, //To Kill a Mockingbird// by Harper Lee contains various themes and life lessons within its pages. The theme of tolerance is the most important point of the book. Tolerance is the acceptance of a person solely based on the fact that they are a human being. Religion, race, and social status in society do not concern a person who has a tolerant outlook. Harper Lee uses tolerance through the characters in the story. By putting the characters through hard situations where the option of being tolerant or not, the reader easily and gradually realizes how tolerant some of the characters are. The main characters of this novel are Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus. The family lives in Maycomb, Alabama around the 1930’s. In their own way all of these characters show an outstanding amount of tolerance to the people around them.

Possibly the best thing Harper Lee decided with the book was to use an unreliable, innocent, and young child to be the reader’s eyes. Scout Finch starts as a typical six year old girl, but as time goes on, she quickly matures and makes lifelong realizations like most children do. Scout is an adventurous and smart young girl that is inquisitive and always eager to learn. Scout is polite and had been raised to be naturally tolerant by her father Atticus. Her innocence is a gift that unknowingly saves a few lives throughout the book.

Atticus Finch is a sterling example of tolerance. He is a lawyer in Maycomb, and treats every single person with the same respect he would give to an authority, be it child, adult, or elderly. He passes on his tolerance to his children, telling them that he could not look anyone in the eye if he treated others better or worse than that person. Even when he is grotesquely disrespected by a person he lost a case to and knows that the man is less respectable than dirt, Atticus does not react at all, he simply wipes the saliva off his face and walks away. Atticus’ intentions and expectations for people are well meant, but at the end of the novel. He finds that some people are really genuinely terrible and would go as far as trying to kill Atticus’ children because of a ruined reputation.

Mrs. Dubose, an old woman that lives a few houses down from the Finch’s, is a sour old woman and is nasty to Scout and Jem whenever they cross her house. She is always hounding them about their manners, clothes, parents, and facial features. One day Mrs. Dubose had gone too far with Jem, and Jem proceeded to ruin her lawn and was punished for it by having to read to the old woman for an hour after school for a month. Jem noticed that when he would read to her, after a while she would start to act very strangely. The children found out too late that Mrs. Dubose was a recovering Morphine addict. She had quit cold turkey because she didn’t want to pass onto the next life a goofed up vegetable. Atticus states that Mrs. Dubose is his hero for going through excruciating pain before she passed away because she knew it was better for her, and it has nothing to do with how she treats other people.

This novel and characters are somewhat timeless. What happened in Maycomb still happen everyday. Tolerance still desperately needs to be promoted. Although we try to say that racism and prejudice is over, we must face realty and know that there are still bad people in the world. But is more people focused on character rather than skin color, tolerance would be an innate word in everyone’s vocabulary.