Atticus practices the ethics of sympathy and understanding that he preaches to Scout and Jem. He doesn’t hold a grudge against the people of Maycomb ‘admire the good in people and understand and forgive the bad’. Despite their callous indifference to racial inequality, Atticus sees much to admire in them. He recognises that people have both good and bad qualities, and he is determined to admire the good while understanding and forgiving the bad. Atticus passes this great moral lesson on to Scout. This perspective protects the innocent from being destroyed by contact with evil.
Ironically, though Atticus is a heroic figure in the novel and a respected man in Maycomb, yet neither Jem nor Scout consciously idolise him at the beginning of the novel. Both are embarrassed that he is older than other fathers are and that he doesn't hunt or fish. But Atticus's wise parenting, which he sums up in Chapter 30 by saying, "Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him," ultimately wins their respect. By the end of the novel, Jem, in particular, is fiercely devoted to Atticus, Scout, still a little girl, loves him uncritically. Though his children's attitude toward him evolves, Atticus is characterised throughout the book by his absolute consistency; he holds the same beliefs and morals throughout the novel and doesn't develop them, unlike his children who grow and mature gradually as the novel progresses. He stands rigidly committed to justice and thoughtfully willing to view matters from the perspectives of others, this he teaches to scout, 'until you climb into his skin and walk around in it'. He doesn't develop in the novel but keeps these qualities in equal measure, making him the novel's moral guide and voice of conscience.
Jem is Scout's brother and constant playmate at the beginning of the story. Jem is something of a typical American boy, refusing to back down from dares and fantasising about playing football. He is four years older than Scout is, he gradually separates himself from her games, but he remains her close companion and protector throughout the novel. Jem moves into adolescence during the story, and his ideals are shaken badly by the evil and injustice that he perceives during the trial of Tom Robinson, he too represents morality and plays a significant role in the story.
If Scout is an innocent girl who is exposed to evil at an early age and forced to develop an adult moral outlook, Jem finds himself in an even more turbulent situation. His awful experience at Tom Robinson's trial, when he sees that justice is not always served leaves him vulnerable and confused at a critical point in his life. Nevertheless, he admirably keeps his commitment to justice that Atticus has taught him and maintains it with deep conviction throughout the novel.
Atticus tells Scout that ‘Jem simply needs time to process what he has learned’. The strong presence of Atticus in Jem's life seems to promise that he will recover his equilibrium. Although Jem is left unconscious with a broken arm after Bob Ewell's climactic attack, the fact that Boo Radley unexpectedly comes to his aid and saves him reminds him of the good in people. Even before the end of the novel, Jem shows signs of having learned a positive lesson from the trial; for instance, at the beginning of Chapter 25, he refuses to allow Scout to squash a roly-poly bug because it has done nothing to harm her, ‘because they don’t bother you’. After seeing the unfair destruction of Tom Robinson, Jem now wants to protect the fragile and vulnerable.
The idea that Jem resolves his cynicism and moves toward a happier life is supported by the beginning of the novel. In which a grown-up Scout remembers talking to Jem about the events that make up the novel’s plot. Scout says that Jem pinpointed the children's initial interest in Boo Radley at the beginning of the story, strongly implying that he understood what Boo represented to them and, like Scout, managed to shed his innocence without losing his hope.
Scout, the narrator of the story lives with her father Atticus, her brother Jem and their black cook Calpurnia in Maycomb. She is intelligent and by the standards of her time and place, she is a tomboy. Scout has a combative streak and a basic faith in the goodness of the people in her community. As the novel progresses, this faith is tested by the hatred and prejudice that emerge during Tom Robinson's trial. Scout eventually develops a more mature perspective that enables her to appreciate human goodness without ignoring human evil, this maturity helps the reader empathise with the characters easily, enabling us to appreciate the importance of the themes in the story.
Scout is a very unusual little girl, both in her own qualities and in her social position. She is unusually intelligent, she learns to read before beginning school, unusually confident, she fights boys without fear, unusually thoughtful, she worries about the essential goodness and evil of mankind, and unusually good, she always acts with the best intentions. In terms of her social identity, she is unusual for being a tomboy in the prim and proper Southern world of Maycomb.
I quickly realised when reading To Kill a Mockingbird that Scout is who she is because of the way Atticus has raised her. He has nurtured her mind, conscience, and individuality without bogging her down in fussy social hypocrisies and notions of propriety. While most girls in Scout's position would be wearing dresses and learning manners, Scout, thanks to Atticus's hands-off parenting style, wears overalls and learns to climb trees with Jem and Dill. She does not always grasp social niceties, she tells her teacher that one of her fellow students is too poor to pay her back for lunch. Human behaviour often baffles her (as when one of her teachers criticises Hitler's prejudice against Jews while indulging in her own prejudice against blacks), but Atticus's protection of Scout from hypocrisy and social pressure has rendered her open, forthright, and well meaning.
At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent, good-hearted five-year-old child who has no experience with the evils of the world. As the novel progresses, Scout has her first contact with evil in the form of racial prejudice, the main theme running throughout the story. The basic development of her character is governed by the question of whether she will emerge from that contact with her conscience and optimism intact or whether she will be bruised, hurt, or destroyed like Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Thanks to Atticus's modern upbringing and wisdom, Scout learns that though humanity has a great capacity for evil, it also has a great capacity for good, and that the evil can often be mitigated if one approaches others with an outlook of sympathy and understanding.
Scout's development into a person capable of assuming that outlook marks the culmination of the novel and indicates that, whatever evil she encounters, she will retain her conscience without becoming cynical or jaded. Though she is still a child at the end of the book, Scout's perspective on life develops from that of an innocent child into that of a near grown-up. That is why I consider her one of the significant figures in the novel. She is the character that carries the reader through the story as the narrator and as the character the novel follows.
Atticus is not the only significant character in to kill a mockingbird. Without each other the storyline wouldn't be strong. Each character acts as a 'foil' for the other and are interdependent in their significance however he does play the most important role as the novels moral backbone, voice of conscience and guide to his well brought up children.
Alice Renouf-Donaldson
