What does Scout learn at the end of To Kill A Mocking Bird?

Throughout the novel, The Kill A Mockingbird, the narrator, Scout, who is only three years old at the beginning, grows up to understand the evils of the society in the 1930s. Her mind is full of fun and excitement, but as important events unfold in Maycomb, she begins to discover themes such as racism and prejudice as she grows older that would have seemed meaningless to her during the beginning

In the earlier stages of the book, Scout enjoyed the summer holidays playing with Jem and Dill. Their curiosity and fascination of the Radley house caused them to come up with imaginary descriptions of Boo. They depicted him as a ferocious monster that ate little kids at night. At one point, Scout rolled into the Radley yard in a tire and Jem and Dill were completely scared that Boo was going to come out and kill Scout. However, a ferocious monster did not come out and kill her and that’s when Scout thought that Boo didn’t kill her and maybe wasn’t going to. The night when Scout, Dill and Jem were creeping around Boo’s house and Jem got his pants caught under the fence. They all ran as fast as they could back home, but when Jem went back for his pants, he found them neatly folded up. They started to believe that somebody in Maycomb was trying to help them, but they did not believe it was Boo. However, the incident that made Scout finally realise that Boo was not a monster and was locked in his house, was the night when Bob Ewell attacked Jem and Arthur Radley knifed Mr Ewell to save the kids. Scout discovered that Boo Radley was not chained to his bed, but refused to come out into the society because of the prejudice he would face if he did.

Before the Tom Robinson trial, Scout never knew what racism was until a black man was charged with raping a white woman. Little did Scout know that the people in Maycomb were obviously against the black and for the whites. After the trial, Scout was unclear why Tom was still charged even though Atticus had defended him so well. She believed that the whites and blacks lived equally and they treated each other the same way. When the lynch mob was outside Tom Robinson’s jail, Scout had absolutely no idea why they were there and what they intended to do. After Tom was charged for rape that he never committed, she completely understands the word racism and how it effected the whole if society. She learnt that whites did not tolerate the blacks and made them live in much lower standards than the whites did. She didn’t understand why it was like that, but she knew that whites did not like blacks.

Throughout the novel, Scout learns much from the daily things that happen in Maycomb. The most important things are the way she slowly understands racism and prejudice in the town that she didn’t know anything about before.