Society's Influence on Innocence

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One of the most reoccurring symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird is none other than the mockingbird itself. According to Atticus Finch, “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (119). The mockingbird represents a symbol of innocence throughout the story. One of the concepts of innocence is that it is quite fragile to any influences made upon it. In some cases, a person may lose their innocence. As seen through the characterization of the Finch children and Boo Radley, people lose their innocence when a society’s negativity corrupts their purity. One example of people losing their innocence from a society’s negativity is through moral education. Earlier on in the story, Scout loses her innocence when she attends first grade. At first she was quite excited to attend school after seeing Jem going to school. Atticus, Scout’s father, had already taught Scout to read and write. Thus, this puts her ahead of her classmates. As it turns out, school did not turn the way she expected. Upon her first day of school, she experiences the harshness of injustice due to her ability of being literate. Her teacher, Miss Caroline is shocked at her knowledge, and forces her to stop reading, since the school was supposed to teach her those things (22). From the point on, Scout realizes the discrimination being a literate girl in Maycomb society. As a result, this affects her learning and pursing what enjoys doing which is to read. For this reason, Scout does not understand why she must stop reading and believes it to be unfair. As a result, her innocence begins to be taken away as she experiences the harshness of the injustice she must go through and which will not be easy because she is a girl. Racism can truly bring out the ugliness of society, and is another example of how innocence is lost through a society’s corruption. Jem, Scout’s brother, loses his innocence through from the
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