Recker
The Changing Perspective of Scout Finch
Many people’s perspectives change over time as they mature. Their view on the world, society, and topics become different than when they were younger. They start to form their own opinions, emotions, and perspectives on life. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, Scout’s outlook is very different from each of the books. Her perspective changes on how she views her father, her knowledge and understanding of words, and her guiliabilty as a child.
In Go Set a Watchman, Scout’s view on her father, Atticus Finch, differs from how she saw him as a child. As a child Scout viewed her father as a good respectful man. She loved her father and believed he was doing what was right. In Go Set a Watchman, Scout is now a twenty-six year old with a complete different view of what her father is. What Scout speaks about her father is completely opposite from what she has spoke as a child. As a child Scout believed that Atticus was not racist in any way but in Go Set a Watchman, she sees him as a racist man and even asks her uncle, “...If only you tell me what’s turned my father into a nigro-hater” (Go Set a Watchman 188). In the novel Scout is horrified of the fact that her own father advocates racial beliefs in an utmost way but as a child she wouldn’t understand and would continue to see her father as a good man.
Scout’s knowledge and understanding of words as an adult greatly contrast from the knowledge she possessed as a child. In To Kill a Mockingbird as the Tom Robinson trial was coming up, a lot of things were said to Scout about her father that she never really understood. She would be told things such as, “...He’s nothin’ but a negro-lover”...
