My Theme

           I can't really think of many ways in which To Kill a Mockingbird relates to me other than the loss of innocence. I've always had a sort of sheltered life, and it wasn't until around 7th grade that that changed. When Scout was losing her innocence and learning about the world, she was very young. I think that this is because she was surrounded by older, and more knowledgeable people; most of which were keen on telling her the truth about her curiosities. There was also a big part in her life that happened when she was very young; the Tom Robinson case. 

         Up until middle school, when I was about 11, I was around kids younger than me and therefore didn't experience the "real world". When I went into 6th grade,  I was very surprised at the level of maturity of all of the people around me, and the amount of swearing that I heard each day. Though my experience was very different than Scout's, it was at this point that I started to lose my innocents. When I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I kinda thought of my middle school experience as like the Tom Robinson case, and the time leading up to it for Scout. When I was in middle school, I lost my innocence, but even as I did, I pretended not to, I pretended that I still didn't know what was going on, because I knew that the artificial world that I had been living in, was better than the real world and all the gross and immature things being said around and to me. When Scout lost her innocence, she took it head on and was anxious to learn more about what was going on around her. I think that the difference between Scout's and my experiences comes from difference of age.

        I also had an experience kind of like Jem's experience when he found out that not all people are nice. It was after an informative day at school in which I had heard about some 7th graders who had been smoking, and it made me think about how many people are out there that I don't even know about, people that are doing awful things, and no one is even trying to stop, or help. It Just made me think about how everything we do is a decision we make that involves other people and that the things that we say and do affect a lot of them.

         From reading about Scout and Jem, and this whole book in general, I've learned to take what I've come to know from my experience, trust it and use it to help me make good choices in the future.