How is society portrayed through the lives of Jem, Scout, and Dill?

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, Dill, and Jem, portray different aspects of society. One aspect of society Scout portrays, being naive and the youngest, is society's education system. Dill, being fatherless, portrays the part of society that struggles to build strong family relationships. Jem, who grows angry with society after the trial, represents the members of society who recognize the need for social change.When the novel opens, Scout...

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, Dill, and Jem, portray different aspects of society. One aspect of society Scout portrays, being naive and the youngest, is society's education system. Dill, being fatherless, portrays the part of society that struggles to build strong family relationships. Jem, who grows angry with society after the trial, represents the members of society who recognize the need for social change.

When the novel opens, Scout is very eager for her very first day of school, a day she has awaited her whole young life. However, Scout is soon very disappointed with Maycomb County's school system. Her first-grade teacher, Miss Caroline, upon finding out Scout can already fluently read above her grade level, instead of encouraging Scout and promoting her to a higher grade level, tells her that her father has taught her wrongly and to stop reading with him, despite the fact no one taught Scout; reading just came naturally to her because she is precocious. Also, upon finding out that Scout can already write in cursive, Miss Caroline tells her to stop, saying that cursive isn't taught in the first grade, only printing. By the end of the school year, Scout feels she hasn't learned a thing and instead lived out each day in total boredom. She states that she learned nothing that year "except what [she] gathered from Time magazine and reading everything [she] could lay hands on at home" (Ch. 4). Since Scout raises so many complaints against Maycomb's education system, we can say that she portrays flaws in society's education system.

Though Dill has a mother, when asked about his father, he grows very embarrassed. He is also described as a homeless waif who "just gets passed around from relative to relative" (Ch. 9). Since Dill has such an unhappy home life, we can say that Dill's life portrays problems society faces in terms of family structure; it can further be said that weaknesses in family structure lead to more significant weaknesses in the structure of society as a whole--a strong, peaceful society cannot be built without a strong, solid family unit.

Prior to the trial, Jem has a very optimistic view of society. After hearing the evidence his father elicited from his cross-examinations of the witnesses, Jem grew convinced Atticus would win the case and has to be warned by Reverend Sykes, "Now don't you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain't ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man" (Ch. 21). Consequently, the jury's guilty verdict brings Jem to tears because he recognizes the unfairness of the verdict in light of the evidence. He becomes so disturbed by the unfairness of society that he must find a way for himself to understand why so many members of society hate each other for no apparent reason, and he reaches the conclusion that people hate each other because they are different due to differences in education level, as he intimates when he asks his sister the following questions:

If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? (Ch. 23)

Jem's ability to recognize social injustice and to see that members of society hate each other because they see each other as different portrays the aspect of society that recognizes the need for social changes.