P4+VCervantes

Essay #1

Title: Tolerance Essay

Begin Text:

Tolerance

The book To Kill a Mocking Bird uses tolerance in a lot of ways. Tolerance means to accept. In the book, scout is one of the main characters. She doesn’t seem to know what tolerance means or what it is. Tolerance can be used in many ways. First, accepting people just the way they are. In the novel is mostly about the theme of white people and colored people. Second, the theme of the book was tolerance, to learn how to accept, not just to deal with. That is what tolerance means. To many people, they seem to understand it, as dealing with, which is not what it means.

Tolerance is important today. Times have passed since people could have certain rights. Today people seem to be tolerant. Everyone is working together. In the novel, people didn’t have the same rights. In the times before no one seems to understand tolerance as much as today. Today in our society there are people that still don’t understand it. Through out the book, we learn that everyone, all the characters, seem to take part in the theme of tolerance.

In the book there is a narrator which was scout. Scout was a little girl that didn’t know much. Tolerance was something that she learns through out the story. In one part of the book she asked her father “what is a nigger-lover?” She doesn’t understand what it means. Everything in her eyes are different then an adult. She wants to know what is right and wrong, because of the people she grew up around. Her father tells her that she cannot use that word “nigger”. He didn’t like it. Scout doesn’t understand why her dad wants to help a black person. The author uses tolerance in scout, because scout seems to want to understand to accept colored people.

In the book, they mention Mrs. Dubose we don’t really understand in the beginning. She was an old lady that was mean. She didn’t really care for anyone. One day Jem does something bad to her garden. She shows tolerance by letting Jem come to her house so he can read to her as a punishment. She seems to have no respect for anyone. She tells Jem and Scout “your father is no better than that trash he works for.” She doesn’t like white people helping black people. Mrs. Dubose is some one that a lot of people don’t like. Jem gets really close to Mrs. Dubose. Jem learns to be tolerant to accept Mrs. Dubose because he learns that she had cancer. Mrs. Dubose is Atticus because he knows to be tolerant.

The last character that showed the theme of tolerance is Jem. Jem is Atticus son. He starts as a little kid not knowing much. AS he gets older he seems to appreciate his father work and what he was doing for a black person. Atticus risked his life. Jem seem to defend him anyway he could. During the trail of Tom Robinson, Jem was on his father’s side. When Tom is pronounced guilty Jem answers “That’s not fair.” Jem has been trying to understand his father, but by that trail Jem sees what his father has done. To kill a Mocking Bird shows us about the tolerance that each character had in the story.