Childhood Experience

An independent study unit essay worth 10% of the final grade of the course.

Title: Childhood experience

Have you ever thought of an answer to reply to your children, when they ask you, "What was the world like when you were a child?", "What things that happened that impressed you most when you were a child?" or "How interesting is your childhood experience?". Everybody must have had their childhood. Some of the experiences may cause them to smile, or even laugh, while some of them may bring back bitter memories. It is always hard to express the childhood incidents or experience in a clear and interesting way, since they were past memories that happened long time ago. Moreover, when a person has grown up, they will never have the same feeling which they might have in their childhood. However, the authors Harper Lee and Mark Twain can express their own childhood inside the stories they created, in a lively and realistic way.

Screenshot of To Kill a Mockingbird(an American mo...

President George W. Bush awards the Presidential M...

Film producer Alan J. Pakula with Lee; Lee spent t...

The two novels To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer have a very similar characteristic. It is the way they describe a person's childhood experience, and their feelings and new knowledge that come out from those experiences. This characteristic, however, has given me a big revelation after reading the two novels. The novels show that the childhood experience of a person has a great positive influence on his personality, behaviour, and ways on dealing with others. This idea has been shown by the authors in both novels.

From the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, one could discover that innocent behaviour and misunderstanding can lead a child to view a person or thing incorrectly and incompletely. This behaviour can also lead a child to a wrong perspective. In the first part of To Kill a Mockingbird,