Jem starts out the story as a superstitious and competitive ten year-old. He enjoys playing with Dill and Scout in the summer, and passing on rumors about Boo Radley. He's also interested in showing that he is brave by either touching the Radley house or walking past Mrs. Dubose's house--two of the scariest houses in Maycomb. Since the story is written from Scout's perspective, Jem's sister, it is she who notices how certain events help to shape and change her older brother.
First, Scout is confused on her first day of first grade when Jem tells her not to bother him during school. She wonders at this because she thought they were good play fellows. He doesn't want her to embarrass him "with references to his private life, or tag along behind him at recess and noon" (16). This is the first boundary that Jem sets up between him and his sister.
One very defining moment for Jem is in chapter 11 when he considers it cowardly not to walk all the way to the corner to meet Atticus after work each night. This means walking past Mrs. Dubose's house and enduring her constant complaints about the children and insults about their father and ancestors. Even though Atticus told Jem always to be a gentleman with Mrs. Dubose, there's one day that he can't take it anymore and he cuts off the tops of all her camellia bushes with Scout's baton. Scout explains as follows:
"In later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it. . . At the time, however, I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he simply went mad" (102).
Jem's penance is to read to Mrs. Dubose for a month following this incident. He also learns that she was fighting a morphine addiction and that Atticus thinks she was one of the most courageous women he knew. Jem learns patience and how to control his temper from this experience, but it doesn't prepare him for the racism and prejudice that he witnesses at the Tom Robinson trial.
The major defining event in Jem's development is how he reacts to the issues surrounding the Tom Robinson trial. Jem witnesses racism and prejudice at their worst and struggles to understand how twelve white men could knowingly convict a black man to death based on little to no evidence. He has discussions with Miss Maudie and Atticus on the subject afterwards, but he seems never to come to peace with it because of what he does to Scout.
One day, Scout finds a discrepancy between what her teacher, Miss Gates, says in class about Hitler and his treatment of Jews and the way Southerners treat the black community in their own home. She asks Jem about it and a monster is unleashed.
"Jem was suddenly furious. He leaped off the bed, grabbed me by the collar and shook me. 'I never wanta hear about that courthouse again, ever, ever, you hear me? You hear me? Don't you ever say one word to me about it again, you hear? Now go on!'" (247).
A once proud, competitive and courageous boy discovers the darkness of the world right at home and he can't face it because it is too confusing and illogical. He's so upset about the trial that he takes it out on Scout--and this happens a few months after the trial is over and Tom has died. Who knows if he ever was able to come to terms with what happened to Tom Robinson.
Jem does move forward with life, though. For example, he takes care of his sister as best he can on the night they are attacked by Bob Ewell. He receives a broken arm during the attack, but he doesn't let that hold him back from playing football, later. Scout says, "He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt" (3).
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