Scout's curiosity is revealed in Chapter 2 of To Kill a Mockingbird as she reflects on her excitement to finally be starting school. She says that she "never looked forward more to anything in [her] life" than starting school. She further reflects that, in wintertime, she used to climb into the treehouse to spy on the children in the schoolyard. Through spying, she learned how to play their games and shared in "their misfortunes...
Scout's curiosity is revealed in Chapter 2 of To Kill a Mockingbird as she reflects on her excitement to finally be starting school. She says that she "never looked forward more to anything in [her] life" than starting school. She further reflects that, in wintertime, she used to climb into the treehouse to spy on the children in the schoolyard. Through spying, she learned how to play their games and shared in "their misfortunes and minor victories" (Ch. 2). The fact that she is so excited to start school and so interested in school that she used to spy on the schoolchildren shows us she is eager to learn anything that is available to her, even schoolyard games if that's all the knowledge she has access to. Since the desire to learn and curiosity go hand in hand, Scout's passion for learning also indicates she is a curious person.
Her curiosity is further revealed in Chapter 4 as she complains about how disappointing her first school year was. Her school's teaching methods are so structured and formalized that she is not being encouraged to learn anything above her first-grade level even though her knowledge already far surpasses first-grade level. As a result, she lived out her first-grade year in a constant state of boredom and sought as much knowledge as she could outside of school through reading. Scout reflects on her eagerness to acquire any knowledge she possibly can and on her disappointments in her school's teaching methods in the following:
As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay my hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. (Ch. 4)
Her passion for reading shows us just how passionate she is about acquiring knowledge, which further shows us just how curious she is. Plus, her feeling that she is being cheated out of her education by her school further shows us just how much she wants to learn as a product of her curiosity.
Since page numbers will vary per version of the book, only estimated locations can be given. The above passages are found in the very beginnings of both chapters 2 and 4.
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