Life Lessons

Throughout the book Scout and Jem have learned some important life lessons. These life lessons are racial discrimination, gender issues and social discrimination. Scout and Jem begin the book as care free innocent young children but as the story and their maturity progresses they realize it isn't quite what they had thought it was. A big example of the racial discrimination that goes on in the book is when Tom Robinson is sentenced to death even though there is evidence supporting that he could not have raped Mayella Ewell.

Jem seems to be most affected by the court's decision because he was so confident that his father had the case in winning reach and wasn't aware of the cruel reality of racism. A example a gender issue is that Tom Robinson, a black male was accused of rape by a white woman and her father, Mayella and Bob Ewell even though they both knew that Tom was an innocent man they assumed they could win in court going up against an African American. An example of social discrimination is the whole town of Maycomb thinks that Arthur 'Boo' Radley is crazy just because he chooses to stay in his house. At the end of chapter 23 Jem says "I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all thistime...it's because he wants to stay inside." This shows that Jem understands that Boo Radley stays inside his house because he is sickened by the racial descrimination and cruelness of the real world outside of his house.