What does Jem do to Mrs. Dubose's camellia bushes? Explain why he does this.

Mrs. Dubose is an old woman with no verbal filter. That is to say, she says anything that she thinks about without any consideration for who it might hurt. Every time Jem and Scout walk past Mrs. Dubose's house, they are polite but she is a witch. For example, she tells Scout not to wear pants and that if she continues to do so, she'll wind up waiting tables. But the worst thing she could...

Mrs. Dubose is an old woman with no verbal filter. That is to say, she says anything that she thinks about without any consideration for who it might hurt. Every time Jem and Scout walk past Mrs. Dubose's house, they are polite but she is a witch. For example, she tells Scout not to wear pants and that if she continues to do so, she'll wind up waiting tables. But the worst thing she could ever say, and the straw that breaks the camel's back for Jem is when she says the following:

"Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? I'll tell you! . . . Your father's no better than the ni**ers and trash he works for!" (102). 

Mrs. Dubose didn't stop at that. She tells the kids that "half the Finches were in the asylum anyway." This recent rant from Mrs. Dubose comes on the heels of Jem having just bought Scout a toy baton. He couldn't take Mrs. Dubose's comments about his family anymore, so he grabs the baton, runs up to the house, and "cuts off the tops of every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned" (103). He also breaks the baton over his knee, pushes Scout to the ground, and pulls her home.

Jem just couldn't take Mrs. Dubose's disrespectful tone anymore. Scout says that "for a few minutes he simply went mad" (102) and deliberately forgot all of Atticus's teachings about being a gentleman. The pressure from the Tom Robinson trial seemed finally to get to Jem and he snapped. Scout thinks that if she was hearing about her father from kids at school, then Jem was probably taking flack as well. Mrs. Dubose's comments were simply all that he could handle before finally losing it and taking it out on the camellia bushes.