In comparison to many other brothers and sisters, Scout and Jem, in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, are very close though they have their moments of distance as the novel progresses.
Scout and Jem's closeness is first captured in the amount of time they spend playing together in the summer. The fact that they are each other's constant play companions is especially captured in the scene in which they meet Dill. Scout narrates that, "early one morning," they were starting to play in the backyard when they heard a noise that drew them to Miss Rachel Haverford's yard where they see Dill for the first time. The fact that they were beginning to play early one summer morning shows us just how much of a habit it is for Scout and Jem to play together, which captures their closeness.
However, they also begin to grow more distant the more time Jem begins to spend with Dill. Upon Dill's influence, Jem invents a game to mock the Radleys that Scout disapproves of and feels uncomfortable playing. Though she tries to get Jem to stop playing it, reminding Jem their father had forbidden the game, Jem and Dill refuse to stop playing. Therefore, Scout begins to spend less time with the boys. She is only invited into their circle when they "needed a third party," and she intentionally keeps out of "their more foolhardy schemes" (Ch. 4). Instead, she spends a lot of time during the summer with Miss Maudie Atkinson. As Jem gets older, he stops playing games and begins spending more time on his own reading, which greatly annoys Scout.
Regardless of their spending less time together, as the novel progresses, their closeness is still frequently revealed, especially in Jem's protectiveness of Scout. Jem's protectiveness of Scout is revealed multiple times, especially towards the end of the novel when he is with Scout the moment they are attacked by Bob Ewell; Jem is with Scout because he escorted her both to and from school for the Halloween pageant.
No comments:
Post a Comment