P4+HGolden

Begin Text:
What Is Tolerance?

In To Kill a Mockingbird the main theme is tolerance. The definition of tolerance is the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others. In other words it’s not just dealing with them or setting them aside, it is accepting them for who they are.

Scout is not only one of the main characters, but she is also the narrator which makes her the most influential character to the reader. It was important to have a little girl tell the story because it leaves some mystery’s an also shows you a bias view so as the book goes on you realizes that you were being intolerant. Scout changes in the story to be more like her dad. She becomes tolerant of all people not only different races.

Mrs. Dubose is the meanest and most racist person in all of Maycomb County. She does not change through out the story she is still as mean as she always was the day she died. So she did not lead by example to teach us tolerance she teaches us in a different way. In the story from Scouts point of view she only sees her mad and racist but she never bothers to figure out why. This makes the reader also intolerant because we don’t have the information to come up with any other conclusion. In reality she is actually always mad because she is fighting a morphine addiction. She was a cancer patient and was put on morphine to help the pain but as she knew she was dying she wanted to go out clean pure. The pain she suffered since she didn’t have anything to help it made her yell at the kids when they walked by. This teaches us to be tolerant because we didn’t bother to figure out why and just hated her for being so mean.

Atticus is another main character and is important because he is the “hero” of the story. Atticus does not change through out the story. From the start he is the most tolerant person I have ever heard of. What does change about Atticus is how much we know about it past. From are point of view at the start he is just a boring lawyer but later we learn that he is the best shot in the county. In the trial he proves that Tom Robinson is innocent but the jury only declares him guilty not for raping a white women, but for feeling sorry for a white women.

This book boldly took on issues in a time when racial tension was at its highest since the civil war. It teaches tolerance by using a real life situation. At the book you are intolerant of other characters but not only do those characters change through out the book but so does the reader as he or she goes through the book.