After Reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Walk Two Moons, I realized how the two main characters of each book are both similar in ways, and very different. Scout and Salamanca are both very observant girls. The two girls see everything that is going on, but sometimes do not always understand it. Neither of the girls has a living mother, but still tries for what they want. The girls are same in these ways, but these things also make them very different.
Scout and Salamanca are alike in that they both are very observant girls who see the world in their own ways. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout describes things in a way that does not always sound her age. Right before the accident with Mr. Ewell, which really defines the book, she was at a pageant. Scout says, “The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them were heavily powdered but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural.” This quote just shows how much Scout goes into detail about her surroundings. In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca is also very observant. The way she describes places and people makes you really just want to see it in real life. Salamanca says, “Mist hung about the ground, finches were singing in the oak tree beside the house, and there was my mother, her pregnant belly sticking out in front of her, she was strolling up the hill swinging her arms and singing.” The passages from each book really show how these two girls are quite the same. They just have different ways of showing it.
Both these girls are observant, but sometimes don’t exactly get what is going on. Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird, finds herself in sort of a sticky situation when a bunch of white men come for Tom Robinson. She doesn’t understand how dangerous the situation is, and just goes about her normal business. Scout has a conversation with Mr. Cuningham, one of the most dangerous men there.
She says, “Hey, Mr. Cunningham, How’s your entailment getting along?” Scout goes on to have a very normal conversation with him, and ends up being the reason the bad mob left. She does not know it but she avoided a very bad situation. Salamanca does kind of the same thing. She sees everything around her, but does not always understand. She can’t understand why her father would want to be around Mrs. Cadaver, whose name means dead body. She says , “Margaret nearly fell over herself being nice to me, aren’t you sweet! I wouldn’t sit down and I wouldn’t look at Margaret.” Salamanca did not like Ms. Cadaver just because she was in a place she didn’t like. Ms. Cadaver was really the only connection with her mother that her dad still had, but Sal did not realize it. Her mother was dead and Ms. Cadaver had known her, but Sal does not listen. Sal does not figure it out until the end of the book when she is older, or at least she would not admit it.
Both of the girls had lost their mother. Not in the same way, but their stories are similar. Scout did not ever know her mother well, but always talked about her like she was great. “My mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.” The difference between Scout and Salamanca was that Salamanca did know her mother, and felt her absence everywhere when she was gone. Salamanca goes on to say, “That is one of the reasons why we left Bybanks, Kentucky. We could still feel my mother’s absence everywhere in the house and everywhere around us.”
Both Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird, and Salamanca, from Walk Two Moons, are very similar girls. They are also different. They had many of the same things happen to them. They experienced many of the same emotions. By reading the two books, I got to know the two girls very well. Although their problems come about in different ways, they have some of the same things happening to them and they face those situations differently. They might be similar, but they are nowhere near the same. That is why Scout and Salamanca are alike and different.
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