To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a coming-of-age novel. This term is from the German word Bildungsroman. In this type of novel, the main character is "initiated into adulthood through knowledge, experience, or both, often by a process of disillusionment. Understanding comes after the dropping of preconceptions, a destruction of a false sense of security, or in some way the loss of innocence."
The protagonist changes in the following ways:
*she moves from ignorance to knowledge;
*she moves from innocence to experience;
*she drops a false view of world to gain a correct view;
*she moves from idealism to realism; and/or
*she moves from immature responses to mature responses.
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