Childhood Presented in To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and The Blu

Childhood Presented in To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper lee side and The Bluest Eye by Toni MorrisonChildhood should be a time of great learning, curiosity, joy,playfulness and guiltlessness. The reality is that it can be a time ofextreme vulnerability and dependency. The innocence and fragility of a baby bird is easily manipulated and abused if not nurtured and developed.Family relationships are crucial in the flourishing of young minds, hardly other puerility associations are important too. These include give lessons life, friends, play and peer-group. Both novels portray thesefactors and their effects on the character formation of theirsubjects, to some extent and, show that growing up can be a painfulprocess greatly accelerated by the events that the children encounter.Scout and Jem are the daughter and son of Atticus Finch, a widowedlawyer based in Maycomb, twenty miles from Finchs Landing the familyplot. They are a white, middle class family who have a blackcook/housekeeper. T heir story is written in To Kill a Mocking Bird,which was published in 1960. Its author, Harper Lee, was a whitewoman who incorporated many of her own childhood experiences into thebook. She too came from a small, sleepy township in Alabama, her ownfather was a lawyer and her childhood friend was Trueman Capote, fromwhom she drew inspiration for Scout and Jems friend Dill. Perhaps themost influential of the events that occurred during Lees childhoodwas the Scottsboro Trials, where nine innocent young black men wereaccused of raping two white women. This was undoubtedly theinspiration for the climax of the novel, the rape trial of TomRobinson. Lee wrote the novel in the late 1950s at the beginning ofthe Civil Rights Move... ...nced, and easy toread way. The character of the narrator Scout is infused with wit andhumour and she paints pictures of lazy summer days at play, whilestill managing to deal with the rape trial and its aftermath. Hercharacters develop throughout the novel by a series of moralisticencounters with neighbours and family, until by the end of the novelScout realises that they have learnt so much and remarksAs I made my way home, I though Jem and I would get self-aggrandising but therewasnt much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra. (ToKill a Mocking Bird, P308)Lee certainly gets her point across but does so in a gentler, lessharrowing way.BIBLIOGRAPHYTo Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee, William Heinemann Ltd, 1960.The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, Picador, 1990.- OTHER RESOURCES USEDwww.sparknotes.comwww.pinkmonkey.com