Good versus evil is often seen by many people as the backbone of conflicts and debates throughout history and the present. Many also often assume that one side of a conflict is right and good, and the other is wrong and bad. But in reality, good and evil most of the time coexist in the same thing. Children, however, many times cannot see this and consider something to be completely right and good or completely wrong and evil. This is shown in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In the book, the main character, Scout, is a young girl growing up in the post-war South with her older brother, Jim, and her father, Atticus. Throughout the story, as Scout grows up, she encounters many people and events that make her question her knowledge of right and wrong. Through characterization, diction, and point of view, Harper Lee illustrates to readers how good and evil coexist within all people every day. To start, one of the ways Harper Lee shows this to readers is through characterization. A good example of this is Mrs. Dubose, Scout's neighbor. Mrs. Dubose is an older, racist woman who always insults Atticus, a lawyer, for defending a black man in court. After getting angry at how Mrs. Dubose could be so evil towards Atticus, Jim tears up her precious flowerbed. As punishment, Mrs. Dubose wants Jim to come and read to her every day for a few weeks. When Jim reads to her, however, after a while she begins to tremble, so Jim and Scout are sent out of the house. After finishing reading them, Mrs. Dubose dies a few months later. It turns out that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict and Jim's readings were helping her overcome her addiction. Atticus then tells Jim that he "had real courage." Jim can't understand it, because she was so... a middle of paper... which can be within the same person. Because Harper Lee writes using a first-person view, the character's events and thoughts are more personal to the reader, and this helps when Harper Lee uses this element of writing as a way to show the coexistence of good and evil. Overall, Harper Lee uses first-person view. elements of characterization, diction, and point of view to illustrate to readers how good and evil can coexist within a person. He places this theme in To Kill a Mockingbird as a message to readers about how good people can do bad things and how good and evil are both part of the human condition and part of being a person. While this is true, he also uses it as a message to the readers by indirectly telling them to use the good within themselves, like Atticus or Scout, and to help others when they need help. Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Per_uccidere_un_mockingbird