To Kill a Mockingbird and Walk Two Moons

           Scout from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Salmanca from Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons have a lot in common, but also have many differences. A common idea the both of the books is that before can truly understand a person you have to look at things from their perspective.

          Scout and Salmanca are alike in that they both lost their mothers. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout was only two when her mother died. “Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.” In Walk Two Moons, Salmanca lost her mother when she was 13, but she had grown to know her mother more than Scout ever knew her own mother. “… It was only then, when I saw the stone, and her name- Chanhassen ‘Sugar’ Pickford Hiddle- and the engraving of the tree, that I knew, by myself and for myself, that she was not coming back.” While Scout and Salmanca both lost their mothers, the difference is that Salmanca knew her mom more than Scout had, so Salmanca grieved over her mom more than the two year old Scout had,. The loss of their mothers greatly affected both of their lives.

          Another way Scout and Salmanca are alike is that they both have very strange friends. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout’s vest friend is Dill. IN the book, Dill often exaggerated things, and he ran away from his family. “‘Why’d you do it?’ No answer. ‘I said why’d you run off? Was he really hateful like you said?’” In the quote, Scout was asking Dill about his family, and why’d he had run away from them. In Walk Two Moons, Salmanca meets Phoebe Winterbottom when she moves. “When Phoebe reminded her that their mother had been kidnapped, Prudence said, ‘Oh Phoebe, Mom wasn’t kidnapped.’” Both Phoebe and Dill had trouble families, and Scout and Salmanca were the ones who tried to comfort them. They were both good friends, and they both tried to look at things from different perspectives.

          In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus tells Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.” In Walk Two moons, Phoebe receives a note that says, “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” Both Scout and Salmanca see things from other people’s point of view at the end of the books. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout sees things from Boo Radley’s perspective. She sees herself and Jem through his eyes, and it greatly changes her thought of him, because she can finally understand why he stays inside all the time. In Walk Two Moons, Salmanca sees things from her mom’s point of view on her trip to ‘bring her back’. As she visits the different landmarks on the trip, she imagines she is her mother, and when she finally accepts her mother’s death, she accepts that her mother didn’t intentionally leave forever. In the end of each book, Scout and Salmanca each accepted things, and ‘walked in someone else’s shoes’.

          Scout and Salmanca were very similar, and despite their differences in age, environment, family, etc, they are very alike. They both lost their mothers, had strange, imaginative friends, and they both “Walked two moons in another man’s moccasins.”