Unit 3: Fiction


Using the PQE method to discuss a character from a studied novel: Sample Question and Answer on Character


Select a character from a novel which you have studied who undergoes a change in the course of the narrative. Explain how this character changes.


The novel which I have studied is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Scout Finch, who is the narrator and one of the main characters, undergoes a journey of discovery about herself and her society in the course of the plot. At the start of the novel, Scout is only six years of age and has a naive and childish view of life. However, throughout the next three years of her life, she learns many important lessons which help her to grow up and become more mature.


One of these lessons is that people should be accepted for who they are and not


treated with disrespect because they do things differently. [P] Calpurnia, the cook, insists on Scout treating Walter Cunningham with respect, even when he eats differently to the Finch family. She tells her crossly that she ‘aint called on to contradict ‘em . . . if he wants to eat up the tablecloth, you let him, you hear?’. Calpurnia will not tolerate Scout acting as if she were ‘high and mighty’ and accuses her of disgracing the family by commenting on Walter’s request to pour molasses on his vegetables. This is an important lesson for Scout and one from which she learns. [Q+E]


Atticus also teaches Scout important lessons which bring about a change in her outlook on life and which make her change and grow up. [P] He encourages her to remain calm in heated situations and to avoid fighting as a means of venting her anger. He encourages her to try to see things from the point of view of others, telling her that she will ‘never really understand a person’ until she climbs ‘into his skin’ and ‘walks around in it’. Although Scout has many problems heeding the advice of her father, she does learn these lessons and matures as the story progresses. [Q+E]


One of the most important lessons which Scout learns is that her society has the ‘disease’ of prejudice. [P] Scout learns that this prejudice is ‘as much Maycomb as missionary teas’ and comes to realise ‘the simple hell people give other people.’ She is not as insightful as her brother Jem, who is older than her, during the trial of Tom Robinson, naively believing that Tom must have been treated fairly. However, we see her growing maturity in the way that she understands that Boo Radley is not the monster that local ignorance and superstition have made him out to be. She learns that it would be ‘sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird’ not to allow Boo the right to his privacy, although the local people would treat him like a hero for saving the lives of herself and Jem. [Q+E]


Throughout the novel, Scout learns many important lessons that help her to become


more of a ‘lady’ and to behave with true courage and dignity. She still has a long way to go though and I found it very amusing when she remarked, at the end, that there wasn’t much left for herself and Jem to learn, ‘except, possibly, algebra’.


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