Characterization

"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."(25) You know how your parents have always told you not to judge others just by their outside? In, To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus teaches Scout and Jem not to judge others by what they hear about them, but instead to imagine themselves in their places and what it would be like to look through their eyes and walk in their shoes. When Scout started school, she found herself not getting along with her teacher, Ms. Caroline, and she was judging her on how she taught the kids.

Atticus told her that it was not fair to judge her teacher because it must have been hard for Ms. Caroline to come to a new school, not knowing the lifestyles of each kid, or the way that they were used to being taught like. Another time that this lesson affects Scout and Jem, is when Jem and Scout think that Ms. Dubose is a mean, cruel, wicked woman, and once Jem got upset at Ms. Dubose and ruined all of her flowers. Atticus told Jem that as his punishment is to go read to Ms. Dubose and Scout went along as well. One day Ms. Dubose passed away and Scout talked to Atticus about it and asked him why she was so mean. Atticus told her that she had been trying to get over an addiction and explained to her that Ms. Dubose was acting like that because she was having a hard time trying to get over her addiction.

Scout looked at the whole situation through Ms. Dubose’s eyes and understood that being around noisy children that would not listen to her probably would have been hard to tolerate.