Foreshadowing In To Kill A Mockingbird

Mrs.Dubose, a racist, old, white lady, would stop the kids to torment them every time they walked past her house. The kids are Jem and Scout Finch. Their dad is Atticus. Jem Finch was Atticus’s 11 year old son and as he was going through puberty, he started to understand the nasty things Mrs.Dubose would say to to him and his little sister Jean Louise, or as she liked to be called, Scout. One day, as the kids are walking past her house, Mrs.Dubose doesn't talk about the kids, but their father.

Mrs. Dubose tells Jem “‘Thought you could kill my snow-on-the-mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says the tops’ growing back out. Next time you’ll know how to do it right, won’t you? You’ll pull it up by the roots, won’t you”’(146). She is telling Jem how to properly kill or destroy camellias as if she knows he might do it again.

The white camellia flower is associated with a Ku Klux Klan-like organization, founded in 1867, called Knights of the White Camellia. The camellia is the state flower of Alabama to enforce white supremacy in the post-Civil War South. Lee fashions Mrs Dubose as a “vicious”(115) woman who Scout and Jem both hate. Her comments about Atticus anger Jem, and when Atticus’s only response is to “‘just hold your head high and be a gentleman’” Jem is “furious”(115).

Duboses White Camellia to show white supremacy and the people trusting a white person's word over an African American person just because of one person's skin color. In Maycomb, there is an old woman named Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. She is a gardener who grows white flowers and is battling an addiction to morphine. Whenever Jem and Scout walk by her house she harasses them and one day Jem snaps and destroys her flowers, because of this, he has to basically babysit her and when she dies she gives him a White Camellia. Lee writes, “Jem opened the box.

Against Judgement It is human nature to judge--maybe even criticize--everyone we meet. We all do it. The only matter is how we go about it. Are we going to give-in to stereotypes and peoples’ appearances, or are we going to judge a person only by who they really are? In the enthralling novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses foreshadowing, symbolism, and allegory to convey that some things--some people--are more than meets the eye, a message that is still relevant in today’s society.

As the novel begins, Jem Finch appears to readers as a frightened boy. Lee directly implied Jem’s childish fears in the first paragraph of her book, saying, “When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury” (3). As the quote states, early in the book Lee expressed where Jem’s childish fear started and how it eventually grew into more child-like brave actions. Lee portrays Jem as a frightened boy when, “Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his palm, and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful”(15). This event describes Jem's childlike behavior to be perceived as brave by Dill and his little sister Scout.

Mrs. Dubose put Jem to the test when she stepped out of line with remarks about Jem’s father, Atticus. Atticus had told Jem “ You just be a gentleman, son” (102). Atticus told him this in hopes Jem would be mature enough to see the sometimes you have to be the bigger person or in this case a gentleman. After one too many rude comments from Mrs. Dubose, Jem finally snapped and what Atticus had told him, did not matter anymore. “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves” (103).

These comments severely anger Jim. Lee plants a loss of innocence in Jem’s reaction to Mrs. Duboses heckles toward his father. In retaliation, he “cut the tops off of every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned.” (118). This retaliation Lee shows gives a large loss of innocence toward Jem.

Jem loses his temper and breaks Scout’s baton while using it to smash and destroy Mrs. Dubose’s camellia bushes. What Mrs. Dubose said was very out of line and disrespectful. However, Atticus warns Jem about her

In the town of Maycomb where the Finch’s live, there is an old woman named Mrs. Dubose. She is an extremely mean and racist old woman known for yelling at kids, harassing people, and tending to her White Camellia flowers. The White Camellia flower is the flower of the KKK, and is widely known to symbolize white supremacy. Not knowing this, Jem destroys these flowers in a fit of rage surrounding Mrs. Dubose's comments about his father. This leads to months of him reading to Mrs. Dubose as a form of punishment for his actions.

Dubose as a symbol to foreshadow Jem rejecting white supremacy. In chapter eleven Jem is gifted a box of white camellias after Mrs. Dubose’s death. She gave the flowers to him because Jem helped Mrs. Dubose battle her morphine addiction by reading to her after school in her final days. When Jem receives the flowers Scout describes, “Jem opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect camellia.

“Well, it’d sort of be like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee. Based during the Great Depression, this novel follows the point of view of six-year-old Scout Finch, the daughter of a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, who defends a black man, Tom Robinson, for raping a white woman because it was the right thing to do. Scout lives with her brother, Jem, her father, and Calpurnia, who practically raises the kids. Scout and Jem are kept up-to-date on their father’s case, and they face the backlash and grief as Tom is wrongfully charged as guilty.

Jem and Scout were on their walk past Mrs.Dubose’s house when she thought she would say something very racist and offend Jem by attacking his father. She thought she would get away with it but Jem decided that was the last straw. We see how Jem reacts when he takes Scout's new baton and Scout narrates “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every Camilla bush Mrs.Dubose owned,” (Lee 118). This is the first time Jem starts to show how he will stand up against racism.

This quote reflects Jem maturing because he was teaching Scout about what growing up was really like to grow up. As Jem was learning he also felt he had the responsibility to take care of Scout as their dad is worried about the trial. For these reasons Jem has become more of an adult and lost his childish curiosity and became a teacher for

Jem was stunned, but even more so when he received a parting gift from Mrs.Dubose. It was a camelia from her garden. His initial reaction was negative, but Scout later sees him holding it with care. Jem learned through this experience that showing regardless kindness to everyone is important because every person is fighting a battle of their