Walk Two Moons and To Kill A Mockingbird
Scout and Sal are two unique names for two unique people. Scout’s story happens during the Great Depression in Maycomb, Alabama in the book To Kill A Mockingbird while Salamanca lives on farm in Bybanks, Kentucky in the story of Walk Two Moons. There are some similarities between Sal and Scout: they’re adventurous, they both have odd friendships with a boy; but there are also some differences. Scout lived in a time before Sal’s and she also has a sibling, Jem (Jeremy). Salamanca also seems to have a very different personality than Scout.
Scout and Salamanca are alike in that they both are adventurous. In TKAM (To Kill A Mockingbird), Scout likes to spend most of her time with her brother. The both of them enjoy walking around and exploring Maycomb. In chapter 11: “”Mrs. Dubose, we’ve been goin’ to town by ourselves since we were this high.” Jem placed his hand palm down about two feet above the sidewalk.” From this and other parts of the book you can tell that Jem and Scout know the area that they live in and frequently traverse it. In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca always talks about the farm where she lives. Right at the beginning of the book it states: “Gramps says that I’m a country girl at heart and that is true. I have lived most of my thirteen years in Bybanks, Kentucky, which is not much more than a caboodle of houses roosting in a green spot alongside the Ohio River.” Along with this, Sal consistently adds thoughts about how she misses her old home, it’s swimming hole, and numerous trees. She liked to climb the trees, swim, and explore. Though Scout and Salamanca live in two very different places, they both like exploration and adventure.
Another thing that ties Salamanca and Scout together is that they both have strange friendships with a boy. In TKAM, Scout has Dill. At the beginning of chapter 5: “He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked me as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me.” Scout and Dill are close friends, but as the story progresses Dill grows closer to Jem, then back to Scout, back to Jem, and so on. In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca is friends with Ben. Throughout the book they each try to kiss the other, but the one who is trying always times it wrong. It only happens twice in the book. The first time is on page 238: “...our heads moved completely together and our lips landed in the right place, which was on the other person’s lips.” Sal and Ben have an odd friendship. They don’t ever acknowledge it, but they both know it’s there. Sal and Ben are like Scout and Dill in that they’re friends, but they know that it’s more than that.
Though Scout and Sal both have abnormal friendships with boys, their personalities are different. In TKAM, Scout is more straightforward and realistic. She’s interested in the truth and figuring out the world. At the very end of the book: “Daylight . . . in my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy.” This passage continues with Scout taking Atticus’s advice and putting herself in Arthur Radley’s shoes. She wanted to see herself as Mr. Radley did. In Walk Two Moons, Sal is constantly thinking of her mother and wishing that she could come back. On page 195: “My father was right: my mother did haunt our house in Bybanks, and the fields and the barn. She was everywhere. You couldn’t look at a single thing without being reminded of her.” Other times Sal has talked about how she wished her mother would come back as if she really could. Scout and Sal’s minds work differently. Scout focuses more on how people in general think, while Sal is all about a specific person.
There was one theme that weren’t exactly applicable only to Scout and Sal that I found in both stories. In TKAM, it says it as “You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.” Walk Two Moons version is “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” Scout gets the moral from her father, Atticus, while Salamanca learns the lesson from the anonymous notes that Pheobe receives. Both of these themes take most of the story to develop and are explained thoroughly by the end.
There are similarities and differences between Scout and Salamanca. Their personalities differ, but the lessons they learn in life are alike. Both stories have lessons that are plain and easy to see, and both also have deeper meanings that are a bit harder to find.
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