To Kill A Mockingbird

        Scout as a nine year old little girl has difficulties understanding the complex adult world. She constantly feels confused and does not understand many of the things that happens around her. For example, she could not make sense of Atticus trying to protect a black man, that everyone in Scout’s school made fun of her about. “Scout,” Atticus says. “You aren’t old enough to understand some things yet, but there’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t be defending this man.” “If you shouldn’t be defending him, then why are you doin’ it?” Scout inquires. Scout is displayed as an innocent child in this scene, where she continuously asks Atticus about why he was doing something that everyone else disapproved of. Although Atticus tries to simplify his situation and explain to Scout of the complicated reasons, Scout’s innocence and purity makes it hard for her to completely understand Atticus’s words.

        Scout has always been outgoing with boys, and constantly displays a boy’s personality as she plays around the neighborhood with her brother Jem and friend Dill. Unlike a stereotypical young girl, calm and quiet, she likes to run about and act like a wild energetic boy. One example is when she bullies Walt Cunningham in school for her own pleasure, she uses physical strength to fight against the poor and weak boy. “Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when I was rubbing his nose in the dirt, Jem came by and told me to stop.” From this scene, the readers can see that Scout is distinctly different from other female kids, but show rather a boyish, wild and fierce character. If she were a normal girl, she would not physically attack Walt, but rather just insult him using words or expressions. However in this scene, the readers cannot see any small bit of Scout that shows her girlish characteristics.

        Scout is also depicted as an very intelligent girl in To Kill a Mockingbird. Exceedingly early for her young age, she knows how to read and write without difficulty. While all the other children in her class are still learning simple letters, she already knows how to read a very long piece of text. This is shown through one scene in the story, where the teacher tests her by making her read one some text “As I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock market quotations from the Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.” As displayed in the book, the readers not only can see that the teacher was mentally surprised at Scout’s ability to read, which shows that she is different from other kids in the classroom, but also Scout’s true intelligence and cleverness. The scene continues on with Scout explaining to the readers how she was naturally born with the gift. “I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow i had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. Reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around.” From these reflections of Scout’s, the readers eventually understand more of Scout’s uniqueness and speciality with her gifted intelligence.

        Scout as the narrator of this novel is presented as an extremely complicated character, with so many different characteristics to her personality. However in the first half of the book, Scout is mainly shown as a brave, innocent, boyish and intelligent child. There are numerous scenes in the story where Scout displays either of these features, that readers are easily able to discover all of these qualities of young Scout Finch.