TKAM+4

Paul Berry Mrs. Anderson Honors English I, Period 3 November 10, 2011

Loss of Innocence: Fiction v. Real Life

 In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout begins to experience her own loss of innocence as the Tom Robinson trial approaches. Yet, upon reflection on the life of an everyday individual, not every case of loss of innocence deals with the same sort of things that Scout is going through in the story. Loss of innocence can be considered a universal theme because it is something that everyone experiences, weather it has to do with the law, or simply a death in the family. I will show this by comparing Scout’s loss of innocence to my own loss of innocence, but first let us define what loss of innocence truly is.  To me, loss of innocence is a time in one’s life where they feel an overwhelming amount of guilt, weather it’s necessary, or unnecessary. Loss of innocence is said to have a lot to do with growing up, but I personally think that one can be grown up, yet still cling tight to their innocence. In my eyes, these kinds of people are the ones we look up to most, because they are most often the ones who show little to no guilt. To further my point, Superman wouldn’t be too “super” if he spent his time wallowing in his guilt, rather than being a confident, heroic, and most importantly, innocent man (and not only in a legal sense). Yet, nevertheless, there are very few Supermen around, which to me can only mean that most people have, or currently are, experiencing a state of what we call, “loss of innocence”. Obviously, loss of innocence can vary from person to person, and I will show this difference by contrasting the loss of innocence between Scout and I.  Scout experiences her loss of innocence when she realizes the nature of the deed in which her father is doing, and the seriousness that goes along with it. This also has a lot to do with the ridicule she experiences within her everyday life. One example of this would be when she goes to church with Calpurnia, and is being rejected by some of the parishioners because of her skin color, and the risk that her father is taking by defending a black man named Tom Robinson. This opens Scout’s eyes to the fact that these sorts of differences cause many of the disputes of her current life.  For me, I’d have to say that the biggest case of “loss of innocence” that I’ve experienced was when my grandmother died. As in Scout’s case, it was a real eye opener to the pains of life, yet in my opinion, I don’t think that it had as much of an affect on me as the idea of racism had on Scout. This too shows that the degree of loss of innocence varies from person to person, yet loss of innocence is still regarded as a part of life for nearly every person, and this is why it is thought to be a universal theme in literature.