“Unlike nearly all the other girls, she isn’t wearing lipstick, her hair doesn’t look as if it’s seen a curling iron recently, and her chin, held high, gives her unsmiling face a truculent [removed]Shields 61). This quote sounds like a description of Scout Finch, one of the most popular and famous fictional characters ever created in American literature. In actuality, this was said about Scout’s creator, Harper Lee, making the parallels between creator and creation overly apparent. In fact, in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee modeled the main character of Scout Finch after her own childhood in Monroeville, Alabama. According to confidants, Harper drew on deeply painful family secrets to create her protagonists and George Thomas Jones, someone who has known Harper and her family for years stated, “I’m not a psychologist, but there’s a lot of Nelle in that book” (Churcher). Nelle Harper Lee wasn’t like the other girls growing up in Monroeville during the depression. Not one for frilly dresses or hair ribbons, Nelle preferred hand me down denim overalls, a female Huck Finn with large brown eyes and close cropped hair (Shields 34). Never one to back down from a fight, Nelle relished these altercations if it meant coming to the aid of weaker comrade, or defending a value she held firm. “Though she was only seven years old, Nelle Harper Lee was a fearsome stomach puncher, foot stomper, and hair puller, who could talk mean like a boy” (32). This was evident as she felt the need to defend her best friend Truman, and beat up neighborhood boys who took pleasure in bullying him. Lee used this same trait in Scout Finch, as evidenced in the schoolyard tussle she had with Walter Cunningham following what she believed was a compassionate act of educating the new teacher on the Cunningham family (Lee 29). In bringing Scout to life, Lee pulled from her own childhood, either nearly every aspect we have come to