Valuable Lessons
As humans grow older and smarter there are people who teach us many significant things about life, at times it may be our mom, a neighbor or a friend. Children learn many valuable lessons that will benefit them now and in the future. Most children are shaped and formed by their community and the people that they live with. In the book To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the main characters, Scout and Jem, learn many important lessons from the people that they live with. Jem and Scout live in a small rural town called Maycomb in Alabama. In this town everyone knows everyone and everything yet at times people misjudge and stereotype. The small town people that they see and interact with help them become the people that they are. Through the help of Mrs. Dubose, Dill, and Boo Radley, Jem and Scout learn valuable lessons such as courage, perseverance, appreciation, and judging someone before knowing them. By learning these lessons and interacting with their family and neighbors they become more accepting and understanding and better people.
Scout and Jem learn the valuable lesson of courage and perseverance from is their crazy neighbor, Mrs. Dubose, who has an addiction to morphine. Jem and Scout do not really like her because she always insults them and their family. In one instance Jem and Scout are walking past Mrs. Duboses house one day after spending a day in town and she starts yelling at them and calling their father names.
Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a
Finch goes against his rasing? Ill tell you! She put
her hand to her mouth. When she drew it away,
it trailed a long silver thread of saliva. Your fathers
not better then the niggers and trash he works for! (Lee 102.).
Jem becomes very upset and goes into Mrs. Duboses yard and pulls out all her white camellias. As his punishment he has to read to her every Saturday for two hours for a month. When he reads to her he notices that Mrs. Dubose sets an alarm clock and every time it goes off her maid, Jesse comes and gives her medicine. Everyday the alarm clock would go off a couple of minutes later. After Mrs. Dubose dies Jem learns that by reading to her he helped her break her addiction to morphine. Atticus tells Scout about Mrs. Duboses addiction after she dies. He says:
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of
getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in
his hand. It's when you know you're licked before
you begin but you begin anyway and you see it
through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes
you do. (Lee 112.).
Before this incident Jem and Scout thought that courage is something that super heroes have, like saving people or killing the bad guys. They thought that courage came by playing sports or cards. After the incident with Mrs. Dubose Jem and Scout learn what real courage is. Mrs. Dubose had real courage and perseverance and she proved it to Jem and Scout by trying to break her addiction to her medicine. Through their experience with their neighbor Jem and Scout learn that life is precious and you must fight for it. They also learn what real courage and perseverance is. Likewise, there are also many other people that Jem and Scout learn valuable life lessons from.
Jem and Scout learn the valuable and important lesson of appreciation from their friend Dill. Dill is a child who gets passed from home to home, from relative-to-relative. He does not really have much. Jem and Scout have a parent, Atticus. Unfortunately, throughout the book Jem and Scout see Atticus as old and boring and at times embarrassing. Jem and Scout complain that Atticus is old and does not do much and he doesnt play sports and things like that. In one incident Scout says:
Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I
asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late,
which he reflected upon his abilities and manliness. He
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