Scout/Sal Essay

I'm normally not so punctual with my blogs, and this is kind of cheating because it's an assignment, but I'm gonna be in Sand Diego until Monday so....

In my opinion, Scout and Salamanca are similar in many ways, one being the fact that they are both very empathic characters. They care a lot about how others are feeling throughout their stories, and to me, are much more empathic than most people generally are. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout, along with Miss Maudie, helps comfort her Aunt Alexandra when they learn of Tom Robinson’s deadly escape attempt. Scout knows how discussed Alexandra is with the ladies at the party for being so carefree in light of the rape case, and Tom’s ensuing demise, and comforts her with the help of Maudie. “She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.” She understands Aunt Alexandra’s plight, and wants to help, much like Sal does with Phoebe.

            Salamanca seems to be perfectly suited to be Phoebe’s natural empath. She went through a similar situation as Phoebe in losing her mother, although Phoebe’s isn’t quite as bad. Sal understands the whirlwind of emotions Phoebe goes through after she loses her mother, and can comfort and support her as she gets a grip on her life. “On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.”  The girls can be very different, however.

            One major difference between Scout and Sal, at least over the course of the books, is their level of happiness regarding their mothers. Even though they both lost their mother’s, they each are in very different mother-less situations. Scout can’t even remember her mother, and so doesn’t dwell her passing. She does have things to be sad about, but the lack of a mom isn’t one of them. “Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.” Sal’s mom died when she was very aware of what was happening, and was a different thing entirely.

            Salamanca Tree Hiddle was a young adult when her mom died, and being such, was very aware of what had happened. She even felt some guilt, mainly about the fact that she wasn’t good enough by herself for her family, which gave her mother the desire to have more children. It just so happened that the baby died in labor and Sal’s mom had to have a hysterectomy (she couldn’t have anymore kids). This causes her to fall into a depression, and leave on that faithful bus ride. Sal has to come to grips with the fact that it may not have been her fault that her mom left; it may have been her mom’s. “While I prayed for Gram outside the hospital, I wondered if my mother’s trip to Idaho was like Moody Blue’s behavior. Maybe part of it was for my mother and part of it was for me.” One of the reasons that it takes Sal so long to come to terms with her mom’s situation is because she’s so secretive, which is the opposite of Scout.

            Sal takes basically the whole book to tell the whole truth about what happened to her mother. You never really know what happened to her mom until the end, and it’s even hinted at that she still may be alive, but staying in Idaho for her personal reasons. Sal is very reluctant to let the truth out, and doesn’t even tell Phoebe that she had a similar experience, even though it may help Phoebe identify with her. Because Phoebe doesn’t know why Sal is qualified to help her, she won’t let her help her deal with her mother’s disappearance. “I felt bad for Phoebe. I knew I should get up and try to be nice, but I remembered when I had felt like that, and I knew that sometimes you just wanted to be alone with the birds of sadness. Sometimes you had to cry by yourself.”

            Scout is incredibly out in the open with her emotions. She lets everyone know how she feels and doesn’t care what they think. You find out very quickly what Scout’s view of the world is, and it doesn’t take the whole book to find out about any of Scout’s secrets. “’Entailments are bad,’ I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was advising the whole aggregation. The men where all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open.”