Part 1 of To Kill A Mockingbird

This book just reminds me of the good ol' days; running all around the neighborhood and just having fun. Excluding the part of being in trouble for going into the first grade already knowing how to read. Last time I checked, if you were able to read going into the 1st grade, that was a good thing. Scout is just a regular 1st grader that is way ahead of her peers in academics. She can read and write already, so she is either going to get bored of school one day and drop out or she is going to do extraordinary things through her schoolwork and on throughout her life. Scout is a very interesting character in this novel, but the character I find most interesting is Boo Radley.

Boo Radley is the crazy hermit who just lives down the street. He never comes out of his house and he is supposedly a total nut case. The man stabbed his father with a pair of scissors! That sounds an awful lot like something that Michael Myers did in Halloween. Nobody ever sees him, but he always seems to see other people. Like when Scout and Jem find the soap in the tree. The soap was carved to resemble themselves. One of the women in the neighborhood also claimed that they saw him looking in their windows. He even put a blanket on Scout during the fire. Boo is also putting gum and a wide assortment of things in the tree for Scout and Jem to take. To me, this just makes him sound like a total child molester trying to lure children to his home. I mean he is so obvious that I do not know why he doesn't just park a creeper van outside of an elementary school and "sell" ice cream to the little boys and girls that are passing by and want to come into his van to get it. Who knows, maybe this guy will turn out really nice at the end of the novel or something, but for now, he just seems like a total weirdo and a creeper to me.

The friendship between Jem, Scout, and Charles Baker Harris (a.k.a. Dill) is very strong. Scout and Jem just find him sitting behind a bush one day then they become best friends. This is why I believe friendship is one of the themes of this novel. This group is inseparable during the summer, until Dill has to leave to go to school, only to return once again the next summer. They re-enact plays and movies, and they eventually try to lure out Boo Radley. Even though Jem is a good three years older than Dill and four years older than his sister, he still loves to play with them. There is nothing that will come between this group of friends.

So far, we are halfway through the book. I have found it interesting so far, so I cannot wait to find out how this book ends. I know the second part is like the Scottsboro trials, but I will have to wait and see how the book ends.