Maturity and change come with age. Whether the change is due to certain events or simply because that person has grown up and been exposed to the real world. That maturity comes from learning life lessons. Learning right from wrong and being exposed to new things. In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch transforms from an innocent five-year-old to a mature, compassionate young woman. At the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout was five years old and knew nothing of the evils in the world. He was young and just wanted to play outside and read with his father Atticus. Scout knew things from Atticus but didn't fully understand them. An example of this is when his father Atticus took a case to court for a black man. The city of Maycomb strongly disapproved of him simply because the man was black. With this disapproval came hatred towards the Finch family. Scout argues with Cecil Jacobs; a school boy; because he said bad things about Atticus, “He had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch's father had defended n-” (Lee 99). Neither Scout nor Cecil had any idea what these things meant, but they both thought they were just doing it to act grown up. Atticus makes sure that Scout understands what is going on even at such a young age. He explains to her why he's defending that man even though the city is against it, "..." The main one is that if I didn't do this I couldn't hold my head up in the city, I couldn't represent this county in the legislature, I couldn't even say to you or Jem not to do something again'” (Lee 100). What Atticus says to Scout actually starts to make her mature and she stops arguing and getting so angry about what people say about Atticus because Scout knows that Atticus is doing the right thing... middle of the paper... what they do. Using that Scout knew that what Miss Gates was saying was wrong about her and she shouldn't have said it. Atticus' involvement in this case has changed Scout's outlook on the world and even her hometown of Maycomb. The hatred she harbored towards her family helped Scout see things in a less hostile way, instead of letting the words get to her and fighting, she saw things differently. If these things hadn't happened Scout would have remained the same and would have matured differently. The Scouts' knowledge of racial issues also changed her. If Atticus hadn't sat Scout down and explained to her what things meant, she would still have the "useless" knowledge. This meant that she would know about things that were happening around her but didn't know what they really meant. Imagine what the adult scout would have been like if he hadn't experienced the racism of his town.