“Jem and Scout Learn Many Lessons About Life During the Course of to Kill a Mockingbird. What Do You Believe to Be the Most Important? Consider What Atticus and Calpurnia Attempt to Teach the Children During the Story.”

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It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children the many valuable lessons that will help to guide them through their lives. This is demonstrated many times throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It is shown mostly by Atticus and Calpurnia, who are constantly giving Jem and Scout advice about what is right and what is not, in life. Scout especially, learns from Atticus not to judge people before she learns their story and also to respect people in her company, to not act like she’s better than others around her. All of these lessons help Scout’s development throughout the novel. The main, and what seems to be most important lesson in the novel, is a piece of advice given to Scout by Atticus. Atticus can translate his thinking into words that Scout can understand. He says, ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ This important snippet of conversation from Chapter 3 shows Atticus giving Scout the crucial piece of moral advice that directs her development for the rest of the novel. Though Scout struggles at first to listen to Atticus’s advice and to sympathise and understand others, at the end of the novel, she succeeds in understanding Boo Radley’s perspective, and fulfills Atticus’s advice. Calpurnia is also a parental figure who helps guide Jem and Scout through their childhood by giving them advice and teaching them lessons. An example of this is when Walter Cunningham comes to dinner at the Finch house and Scout embarrasses him at the dinner table, asking why he had drowned his dinner in syrup. Calpurnia asks for Scouts presence in the kitchen when the following quote takes place. “There’s some folks who don’t eat

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