Loss Of Innocence

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Loss of Innocence Both Gene in A Separate Peace and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird experience a loss of innocence when they come to realizations that there is evil in the world. An examination of the scene where Gene jounces the limb of the branch and when Scout finds out that Dolphus Raymond really drinks Coca-Cola reveals how the authors show the characters’ developments. When Gene jounced the limb of the branch and saw Finny fall he realized that he could have been the cause of a tragic event to Finny whether the jouncing was done intentionally or by a mere accident. Because of this realization, Gene sees that he, along with the rest of the world, has the potential to do evil. After this experience, Gene loses his innocence. Scout, too, experiences a loss of innocence. “‘Dill, you watch out, now,’ I warned. Dill released the straws and grinned. ‘Scout, it’s nothing but Coca-Cola.’” (Lee, 200) Scout had always been told that Mr. Raymond is an evil man who drinks whiskey all day with the colored men. Not once did she bother to think that what she has been told about Mr. Raymond is a lie; she was young and innocent. She believed what everyone told her about this man without a single doubt that what she had heard might not be the truth. Here, she discovered the concept of racism and saw why people told lies about Mr. Raymond. This was the moment where she lost her innocence through realizing that people would say untrue things about other people simply because they were biased towards them. In both works, the authors display the characters’ developments by giving both the characters an experience in which they lost their innocence and discovered the truth about the real

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