Coming of age comes with an inevitable end of childhood innocence, without which graduation into maturity cannot truly take place. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Jem, a ten-year-old boy, and Scout, a six-year-old girl, two children who live in the southern town Maycomb, Alabama, are shown in their adventures that help them mature. During the years of the Great Depression - the years when this novel is set - racism had been an attitude many southerners followed. Atticus, Jem and Scout's father and also a respected lawyer, is appointed to take part in a controversial trial: he is to defend Tom Robinson, a poor negro laborer charged with raping Mayella Ewell, the nineteen year old daughter of the impoverished Bob Ewell. Jem and Scout are shown going through a tremendous amount of growing up in this novel - not only physically, but also...