May 25 2009
Welcome to Reality (Chapter 21-25)
Life is crazy, isn’t it? After all, just by growing up, people’s perspective of the world starts to change. When we’re kids, we sort out the world into two types of people: good and bad. And how we differentiate between the two is good = the people that follows what our parents teach us, and bad = the people who don’t. But that gets shattered as we get older and we experience more. Like Jem, we start to lose that innocent look at life. Jem, who is just a kid, sees how different the world is when they become “bad”. To him, the entirety of Maycomb County is now cruel and evil. They’ve done the unspeakable; they have sent an innocent man to jail and to be later strapped to a chair and electricuted. However, let’s pretend we are some average Maycomb citizen… let’s be Stephanie Crawford. To us (as Stephanie Crawford), this is a rightful sentence for a black man that has been accused and convicted of raping a white woman. Look at how split people are when it comes to topics like abortion or capital punishment. Every person gets set on their own belief system, and whoever tries to defy our belief system suddenly becomes bad. We can’t really classify anyone as all bad, we end up learning. Jem’s just getting the scrape of how life really is. Now he knows that not everyone is a good, perfect person.
Reality is harsh and cruel. We end up changing our thoughts of what is good and what is bad. We learn how people and life really is; and it definitely isn’t all rainbows and gummy bears. Hey, Jem and everyone that reads this, welcome to reality.
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This is one of the most relevant posts I’ve seen throughout this blog project. Everyone has their own perspectives on what morals are worth having. You stated that people that are “bad” when we are young are the ones that don’t follow our parents’ beliefs.
Jem is maturing as we see and his views are now aimed on the actual reality — one that is not perfect.
We are mostly shielded as children from the “bad” or imperfect parts of society. This can make getting older a difficult process. In this book, we see a lot of prejudice which I see as wrong. Others don’t agree with me but I think this is one moral that ALL humans should share. All humans should look at one another as equal — as truly human.
Mr. Ewell is one of the people in this book that I don’t respect at all. He shows a lot of immaturity, prejudice, and idiocy. This related to what you said about the difference in views between Jem and Stephanie.
This was a very educated and relevant post.
–Shane Haddad