A lot of Scout's development, which corresponds to her losing innocence and gaining knowledge, has to do with a growing awareness of others around her. In Chapter 12, Calpurnia takes the children to the African-American church. Scout gets a closer look at this other community that exists in Maycomb. She gets a better idea of the racial divide. She also considers, for the first time, that Cal has a life outside of their household:
That...
A lot of Scout's development, which corresponds to her losing innocence and gaining knowledge, has to do with a growing awareness of others around her. In Chapter 12, Calpurnia takes the children to the African-American church. Scout gets a closer look at this other community that exists in Maycomb. She gets a better idea of the racial divide. She also considers, for the first time, that Cal has a life outside of their household:
That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.
This is like seeing a teacher outside of the classroom for the first time. It seems so out of context if we've never considered that people have lives all their own: lives which do not revolve around us. The difference here is that Cal truly leads a double life. The cultural divide between black and white in Maycomb is such that the communities even seem to speak in different languages.
Another prime example of Scout's growing awareness occurs at the end of the novel. When she stands on Boo Radley's front porch, she literally sees the town from his perspective. This is one of Atticus's ongoing lessons. He teaches the children to consider the perspective of others. This applies to Boo, Bob Ewell, Mayella, Tom Robinson, and so on. When Scout ponders her encounters with Boo, she demonstrates wisdom and a loss of innocent or ignorant thinking:
Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
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