Life Lessons.

After coming near the end of the book, many life lessons have been taught to Scout and Jem by a numerous amount of adults, but I think one important lesson is teaching Scout to be a lady. In life, almost all of us assume that little girls will grow up to be ladies, and little boys will grow up to be men. Since Scout is almost always with Jem, Dill, and Atticus, she picks up on their less feminine habits. When Aunt Alexandra comes to town in Chapter 13, she is trying to teach Scout to be lady-like and polite; also forcing Scout to dress this way, which to me is an important lesson for girls.
On page 229, Alexandra says, "Stay with us, Jean Louise", talking about the missionary circle. In Scouts head, she was thinking, "This was part of her campaign to teach me to be a lady." Since Alexandra is making Scout stay in the circle of ladies, she is teaching Scout to be a lady. What Scout learns over all about life is to be more polite and girlish. When I was growing up, my mom took part in teaching me to be lady like and polite, as Alexandra did for Scout.

EXTRA CREDIT!

With the start of every new school year comes two important things... the good, and the bad. Personally, I classify relearning responsibility and persistency as bad. Luckily, however, come the good things about a new school year. In my opinion, English class with Mrs. Gilman is categorized under the good things. As a high school student, you are expected to hold standards and be responsible young adults. When coming into Mrs. Gilman's class, one of my reactions was that I will have to do these things this year. I can already tell that Mrs. Gilman is one of those teachers that won't put up with our "cry baby bull-crap", so I thought it best to try to stay on top of things like the warriors we will soon learn to be.

In the past six weeks, I feel I have been doing a good job of it. My second reaction of coming into the class was that I will be learning things that I actually WANT to learn... In previous similar classes, I was always bored out of my mind doing ridiculous assignments that were handed out to keep us busy. Thankfully, when I got into Mrs. Gilman's class, I realized that I will actually be learning something rather than doing time consuming activities. These six weeks have been great so far, and I look forward to keeping it this way.

Themes :)

Out of the many themes in To Kill a Mockingbird, I think racism/prejudice actions

are one of the most common ones. Since this is a main theme, racism is portrayed throughout

the book. The story is set in the south, and the time era of the story was when racism was

most popular in the United States. The book shows a perfect example of racism on at

least every other page.

One example is the way that people talk, constantly using terms such as N-word,

N-word lover, etc. On page 180, Mayella Ewell shows a clear example by saying, "I said

come here, nigger, and bust off this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for you.

A second way racism is shown is the Tom Robinson case. So far from what we've

read, we can all gather that the accusations made by the Ewell's were partly because

Tom Robinson is a colored man. And the third way is how blacks and whites are separated.

Examples of this would be private lands for homes, and private places to sit in the courtroom.

The blacks sit in the balcony.

Atticus as a Father.

To me, Atticus is an older parent, with much of some world experiences in the palm of his hands... He's very intelligent, and tries to pass on his knowledge to his kids, which I think he does a good job at. In the book, innocent Scout asks her dad if he is a "N lover." I learned about Atticus's job of a parent when his reply was, "I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody... I'm hard put, sometimes---baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you." Values that Atticus tries to instill in his children were that they should be strong and shouldn't judge one another. 

I honestly wouldn't mind having a father like Atticus, seeing as how he's not too different than my own parents. He's like my mom a lot... most of the values Atticus has taught Scout and Jem in the book were values my mom has taught me. She's taught me to be fair, loyal, non-judgemental, and so on. The only way he's different is that Atticus isn't a very affectionate man, while my parents are very affectionate.