To be quite honest with you, I am BORED out of my MIND reading this book. The author tells you everything, and doesn't show you. I like the storyline, and the different parts of the storyline make certain parts climactic, but in whole, the book is boringly written. The story moves forward too slowly, and then rushes past certain [important] parts (I think) to the story. Harper Lee, I believe, was trying to tell it from the point of the young girl, Scout, rather than from a grown-up perspective, and that is why the book is written so plainly.
When I started reading, I wondered why the book started with Jem's broken arm. As I read on, I realized that Harper Lee had been foreshadowing something that was coming later in the story when she said (on page 3) "...we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Dill is the classic kid: when you tell him about something bad or not good to do, he wants to do it anyway. He comes up with the idea to get Boo Radley to come out, and then leads Jem and Scout on many subsequent adventures. Dill thinks about certain things a lot. The more he thinks, the more he becomes convinced that it is a good idea and that he needs to do it and get it out of his system. Even when he leaves Maycomb for the school year, he still thinks about it and has planted a seed in Jem and Scout's life.
During the school year, Jem separates himself from Scout - him being a fifth grader and Scout being a first grader. Scout has longed to join in with her brother and be part of school, but now she is being separated from him. This is the basic storyline in many books where the character's story takes place at school, such as in the book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. In this book, Frankie wants to fit in at college, and so looks for ways she can. When she gets a boyfriend, she feels unhappy that she is being excluded from her boyfriend's all-male club, and so she takes action and eventually becomes the head mastermind of many pranks that go too far on campus. Since Frankie was being excluded from being able to fit in, she felt like she had to do something or take it out on someone. That someone just so happened to be her boyfriend.
In many books where this kind of storyline happens and there is an older sibling (or relative, friend, etc.), the elder sibling distances him or herself from the younger sibling in order to gain popularity. Jem is infected by this bug. He wants to be popular and respected by his peers, and so he acts like he doesn't know his sister. He tells her that she is "not to approach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant Men,to embarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behind him at recess and noon." (pg 20)
Because of this, Scout is left to be her own companion, and face first grade alone.
During the day, Scout wonders why she is not allowed to write or already know how to read. Miss Caroline says to "tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage -" (pg 23)
This left me wondering: why is learning to read and write before school "damage"? When a child can read or write before they start kindergarten, they are usually celebrated by the teacher, and maybe disliked by the other students. I wondered about this question until I read this article. In it, the author says that many educators don't want parents to support their children in reading and writing at home because the job should be left to the educators. Educators worry that the child will "learn something wrong" if they are taught by their parents. Honestly, that kind of thinking sounds completely unfounded to me.
Later on (pg 37), Scout still feels anger towards Miss Caroline for banning her from reading, and feels like running away so that she doesn't have to go to school. Scout feels that school (and Miss Caroline) is attempting to take away something that she had worked hard for and loves now that it feels like it is going to disappear. On page 23, Scout mentions just that. "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." I think that this may be one clue as to why kids don't like school very much. They fear that they will lose something that is valuable to them.
You cannot force someone into a new environment that they don't want to be in. Like the Ewells, you cannot force someone to want to learn. It comes naturally, and if someone doesn't want to be in that new environment, then they will never feel comfortable there.
I believe that Miss Caroline can't respect another person's lifestyle other than that which she has been taught and is supposed to teach to her students, as illustrated in the following quote from the book.
"'You're shamin' him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn't got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can't use any stovewood.' Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back to her desk. 'Jean Louise, I've had about enough of you this morning,' she said." (pg 28)
When Walter and Jem and Scout are walking home and pass by the Radley place, they aren't scared. They illustrate the "safety in numbers" concept that younger children demonstrate sometimes. When faced with the fear of the unknown, they feel safest together.
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I couldn't fit it all in one blog post, so I made two.
Sources:
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001035.pdf
http://www.rightstartmagazine.co.uk/readysteadyread.html
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