To Kill a mockingbird
...ught Scout to treat people equally regardless of their economic status. However, this also went along with the moral value of everyone being equal. For Scout, Calpurnia also became the bridge between her white community and Calpurnia’s black community. When Calpurnia took the children to her church, her language and personality changed. Scout was confused and asked Cal about her dialect change. Cal’s explanation of why she talked “colored folks’ talk” (126) greatly helped the children understand and sympathize with the difference between blacks’ dialect and their own dialect. Instead of looking down on the black way of speaking, Scout was intrigued by it and even asked Cal if she could visit her house some time. Cal’s explanation taught Scout that just because someone’s different from her in one form or another, it does not mean that they are a worse person. Atticus Finch, as a lawyer, was a professional defender of justice. Atticus Finch, as a father, was a paternal defender of morality. Atticus was the backbone of the novel and was the backbone of Scout’s moral education. His teachings to Scout were invaluable. “You never really understand someone...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (30) This was his first advice to Scout on not prejudging others. It was based on the premise that people can possess both good and bad traits. Atticus taught the children to value good qualities and understand bad qualities by walking around in others’ shoes. There is confusion as to how Atticus could admire an evil lady like Mrs. Dubose and call her “the bravest person” (112) he ever knew, even after she constantly verbally attacked him. Atticus tried to teach the children to look at both the good and the bad. He contributed to Scout’s moral education just from leading by example. He admired Mrs. Dubose’s dying courage, while he deplored her racism. Another example of Atticus’ influence on Scout’s moral growth involves his advice toward racism. After the trial, Atticus tells the children, “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life but...whenever a white man doest that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.” Scout, afffected by the outcome of the trial and the injustice in the society around her, finally grasped Atticus’ words as she was maturing more and more. Harper Lee’s development of Scout’s maturity throughout the novel worked paralleled Scout’s ongoing perception of Boo Radley. In the beginning, Boo Radley was a mythical being to Scout. He existed as a fictional character in stories she heard or games that she played. This was the time before her moral growth, a time when Scout dealt a lot with childish imagination. As Scout progressed in life, her perception of Boo changed. She was able to understand and sympathize with Boo a little more, as Atticus’ had taught her. When she started school for the first year, gifts appeared in the tree...