The Mental Growth of Children
The Mental Growth of ChildrenThe Mental Growth of Children
The book To Kill a Mockingbird, is a story about not only growing older but maturing. The children actually grow up mentally. They can be so young, but still be mature. These mentally maturing stages affect them throughout their lives. Events in the story like the Tom Robinson trial, the Boo Radley story, and Mrs. Dubose’s drug condition.
One example of how children mature while they are still young is the Tom Robinson rape trial. Before the trial, the children had no idea what rape was, but they took a step into maturity and learned the meaning of the word. Also, before the trial, they didn’t know how society worked. They didn’t know how white people treated black people. Now they have a slim idea as in how society works. For example, when Dill was conversing with Scout and he said “It was the way he said it made me sick, plain sick” “He’s supposed to act that way, Dill, he was cross-” “He didn’t act that way when-” “Dill, those weren’t his witnesses” “Well, Mr. Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him ‘boy’ all the time and sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury everytime he answered-” “Well, Dill, after all he’s just a negro” That conversation shows that Scout noticed how white people were treating black people, so she might have thought it was okay. So, you can see that children can be young but still be mature in a way.
Another example is the Boo Radley story. All the kids in Maycomb County had feared Boo Radley. There had been outrageous stories that weren’t very realistic but kids still decided to believe in them. The incident with Bob Ewell intentionally trying to kill Atticus’s kids, just to get revenge on him, had taught Scout something. Also, after that night Boo had to save them from Mr. Ewell, Scout realized that Boo was a great person. She realized that Boo was a regular kid that just liked to stay home all day and not interacting with the outside world and not a psycho that everybody thought he was. Scout liked him so much she walked with him back to his house, and as you can see, Scout walking with Boo back to his house is considered a nature thing to do, for a child. Since Boo probably was very scared since he just killed a person and was scared to walk home, so Scout walked him home.
Another example is Mrs. Dubose’s drug condition. Scout and Jem always thought that Mrs. Dubose was very grumpy and cruel. Scout and Jem thought the reason for the grumping and cruelty was just that she was plain lonely and that she had nobody to talk to. Well, after Jem knocked down all her flower bushes with a baton and having to read to her for a month, he found out that loneliness wasn’t the reason for her unhappiness. Well, when Jem read for her a certain amount of time, Mrs. Dubose would tell him to scram. After a while, Jem caught on to Mrs. Dubose’s case. He found out that she was a Morphine addict and he was reading to her to calm her down. He found out when she died and Atticus had told him what had happened.
So, as you can see, when Jem found out about Mrs. Dubose’s drug condition, that, in a way is a sign of maturity.
So, as you can see from these three examples that children can be children, but in a way, have a mind of an adult. Another way to say it is, children can be young physically but at the same time be mentally mature. These thoughts can affect them through their earliest parts of life since those thoughts determine which child grows mentally.