English H. Period 8
Scout’s Personality Essay
There are many components to literature, however, one of the most important are the characters. Throughout a story, readers become submerged in a characters’ life and learn about what type of person they are and watch as the characters develop overtime. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Scout is one of the main characters that readers become familiar with, since the story is told from her perspective. Everything, from her actions to her speech, shows us a fragment of who she really is. Each fragment eventually pieced together to form Scout’s personality. In part one, readers get a good grasp on what kind of person Scout is; her character traits are illustrated on countless occasions. There are numerous traits that Scout demonstrates and within the story, certain traits are more strongly exposed than others. In particular, Scout is portrayed as very innocent and also reveals to be protective in the first part of the book. Scout is depicted as innocent throughout the first part of the book because she doesn’t understand certain consequences for her actions. For instance, when Scout revealed she is able to read “most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register” (17), her teacher “looked at [Scout] with more than faint distaste” (17). Her teacher, Miss Caroline, then proceeded to order Scout to tell her father to stop teaching her, but Scout denies the claim that Atticus’s teaches her and tries explaining to her teacher that she learned on her own. Scout eventually loses the argument however, and she “mumbled that [she] was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime” (17). On the same day, Walter Cunningham is offered lunch money that he could not take, so Scout “rose graciously on Walter’s behalf” (20). Miss Caroline seemed to not understand Scout’s attempt to edify her on the