Theme Of Childhood Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

In this essay, I'm going to talk about the theme of childhood innocence throughout the novel of TKAM by Harper Lee. Looking at the narrator, Scout Finch who is a young white girl who lives in Maycomb, Alabama during The Depression, and we follow her throughout the book as she begins to understand the prejudice and extreme racism towards people of colour.

In the beginning of the novel, Scout, Jem and Dill have a simple idea of what is good and what is bad and are naive about the world they live in. However, by the end, they have lost all of their childhood innocence and have a better understanding of how the world is. This is shown clearly thanks to the narrator Scout who is six when we meet her and read the novel in the perspective of, but as she gets older and the novel progresses she loses her childhood Innocence.

Scout, Jem and Dill are innocent in the beginning of the play. This is shown by how they imagine Boo Radley to look like, with Scout and Jem saying “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch...what teeth he had were yellow and rotten” These descriptions seem to us as readers as childish, but it also proves the point of how the children are very innocent because they are only imagining which is what a child does without knowing the truth about him.

Another example of their childhood innocence is shown when Scout and Jem show up at the jailhouse and casually walk towards the lynching mob, who were intending  on killing Tom Robinson and Scout begins talking to one of the mobs members : Mr Cunningham saying “Hey, Mr. Cunningham.”  and she begins to talk about his entailment and also says "Tell him hey for me, won't you?". By casually having a conversation it shows us her innocence as she does not realize that there is tension in the air or that the stake of this moment is high, which in this case was the life of an innocent man.

However, the children lose their childhood innocence once the jury reads the verdict of the trial, stating that Tom is found guilty. Everyone, especially Jem who is affected the most, starts crying and denying the results as he believed that the verdict would be fair, saying that “You can't just convict a man on evidence like that-you just can't”. During the trial the children find Mr Raymond who is an outsider because of his relationship with a black woman as a white man. He tells Jem, Scout and Dill that what is happening to Tom is horrible, but it will not be their last time witnessing such injustices as murdering black members of the Maycomb community happens all the time because of the deeply rooted racism and prejudice and that at some point they will get used to the injustices which happen around them, and they will just obey the rules of society (for white men/women).