Scout's greatest talent, if it could be called a talent, is that she is a fluent reader and able to write before she even starts school.
I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. (Ch. 2)
Scout's teacher Miss Caroline does not know what to do with her. She is expecting to teach the first graders the alphabet, and then she gets one who can ready anything put in front of her and write properly in cursive too. Miss Caroline is a young teacher, and she is unprepared for Scout's talents.
Scout is a little girl, and she likes to do little girl things. She has an active imagination. For example, she uses a stick and pretends it is a baton, hoping to join a marching band someday.
It was then my burning ambition to grow up and twirl with the Maycomb County High School band. Having developed my talent to where I could throw up a stick and almost catch it coming down, I had caused Calpurnia to deny me entrance to the house every time she saw me with a stick in my hand. (Ch. 11)
Scout prides herself on not acting like a girl. She can climb trees with the best of them, which irritates her Aunt Alexandra, who wishes she wore dresses instead.
I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants. (Ch. 9)
We also know that Scout is handy in a fight. Her father tells her not to get into fights, asking her to be the bigger person, but Scout has some trouble with this when her father defends Tom Robinson and the entire town seems against him. She defends her father by fighting everyone from her cousin to classmates.
My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot. (Ch. 9)
Scout is not a violent person, but she has a temper. She is not afraid to stand up for herself or her father. She is really too young to understand what all of the fuss is about, and just doesn't like people saying things about him.
Another of Scout’s talents is swearing. Her father thinks that this is just a phase and ignores it, but Scout gets rather good at testing out words she shouldn’t say. It irritates her Uncle Jack, who prefers that she doesn’t use the foul language at all.
“You like words like damn and hell now, don’t you?”
I said I reckoned so.
“Well I don’t,” said Uncle Jack, “not unless there’s extreme provocation
connected with ‘em. I’ll be here a week, and I don’t want to hear any words like that while I’m here. Scout, you’ll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?” (Ch. 9)
Scout's fascination with swearing is just an example of her immaturity. Although Scout can read, she does not like school. School is a place where the other children taunt her and no one understands her, especially her teachers.
No comments:
Post a Comment