To kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, communicates many themes concerning how its characters lose their innocence due to some form of moral corruption they were subjected to as children. At the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is an innocent, good-hearted five-year-old child who has no experience with the evils of the world. As the novel progresses, Scout has her first contact with evil in the form of racial prejudice. The …showed first 75 words of 2563 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2563 total…ral education, and the theme of how children are educated--how they are taught to move from innocence to adulthood--recurs throughout the novel (at the end of the book, Scout even says that she has learned practically everything except algebra) (Mckey <http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tkm/>). This theme is explored most powerfully through the relationship between Atticus and his children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social conscience in Jem and Scout.