Calvin Tang 5-7-13 Johansson 501 Period 2 To Kill a Mockingbird Assertion Essay Everybody in the world makes assumptions;

it's an inevitable flaw in humans. We always tend to judge a person based on what we see, not what we know. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the town of Maycomb seems like a friendly community full of people who get along. But in reality, Maycomb is a small town that discriminates people that are different from the normal. Not many people in town stop and consider what a person is made out of on the inside, past what a person can see. Most people have good qualities even if on the surface they seem bad. Mrs. Dubose is a seemingly cranky old woman in the story. Jem and Scout do not like her at all. When Scout is describing the old lady, she says this: "Jem and I hated her. If she was on the porch when we passed, we would be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behavior, and given a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up, which was always nothing"(Lee 99). As this passage shows, Mrs. Dubose seemed to be a very unpleasant woman. To constantly harass two children is quite evil and it gives Jem and Scout good reason to hate her. Later on, Jem had ruined Mrs. Dubose's yard, so in return, he had to read to her for an allotted time. For every time Jem read, Scout came along. "I wondered if Jem's activities had put her there, and for a moment I felt sorry for her. She

was lying under a pile of quilts and looked almost friendly"(Lee 106). At the time, Mrs. Dubose was very ill. She was previously addicted to morphine and was experiencing withdrawals, so she seemed more serene than usual. Just by going over to Mrs. Dubose's home, Jem and Scout were already beginning to see a better side of the elderly woman. After Jem had heard that Mrs. Dubose had passed away, Atticus tried to explain to him what a true amazing person she was: " 'I wanted you to see something about herI wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. ... You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her ...' "(Lee 112). Mrs. Dubose died as a woman with true bravery. She knew she was going to go through a hard time, she stuck with it, knowing she had to make up for the rest of her life. She wanted to die knowing that she overcame her addiction. Atticus wanted his children to know that him shooting a dog is nothing compared to a woman like Mrs. Dubose, a great woman, unlike what many would see her on the outside. Arthur "Boo" Radley may be the strongest example of how people judge others in the entire novel. As children, Jem and Scout had heard rumors about their infamous neighbor, Arthur Radley, who rarely showed himself to the public. "Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's what his hands were bloodstained ... There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped. and he drooled most of the time"(Lee 13). By this description, Boo seemed like a very disgusting and feral human being. His lack of hygiene sounded unbearable to any normal person. After the court case of Tom Robinson, years after the children were interested in Boo Radley, Jem was reconsidering what he was like: " 'I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this timeit's

because he wants to stay inside' "(Lee 227). After seeing how cruel and unjust the world really was, Jem was really thinking about who Boo was. He even dared to question that Boo was afraid of the outside and how others would immediately judge him. Maybe staying inside would be his only safe option. After Mr. Ewell had attacked the children in the night, Boo Radley had revealed himself and saved them. After all of the commotion, Boo went home and was never seen again. Afterwards, Atticus was reading a story in Jem's room, where Scout joined him. "An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those thingsAtticus, he was real nice' "(Lee 281). The Gray Ghost, the story Atticus was reading, had a character that was very similar to Boo Radley. Many people made rumors and assumptions about this character, which reflected Boo in the real world. Boo was actually none of what anyone had said about him, but actually a kind person who's intentions were to only look after Atticus's two children. Although based on what the other people in Maycomb had said about Boo were false, others refused to believe so. No matter what they heard about Boo, nobody would come up with the idea that he may have been an actual good person.