Miss Harper Lee has chosen Scout as a first person narrator in this story. This narrative technique has many strengths and some weaknesses. Scout is a bright, sensitive and intelligent little girl. For all her intelligence, she is still a child and does not always fully understand the implications of the events she reports. This is sometimes amusing, as the time she thinks Miss Maudie’s loud voice scares Miss Stephanie. Scout does her best to inform us of the happenings at the Tom Robinson trial. Yet, she is not certain what rape is, and is neither aware of the prejudice tate surrounding her.
Ultimately she represents the innocence within society. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout Finch, a little girl growing up in a small Southern town, tells the story of her childhood, when she witnessed the trial of a Negro falsely accused of raping a white woman. The Negro’s lawyer is Scout’s father, Atticus Finch. He defends the Negro vigorously, though he expects to lose the case. As well as being the story of childhood, it is also the story of the struggle for equality of the American Negro. To Kill A Mockingbird can be read as the story of a child’s rowth and maturation.
Almost every incident in the novel contributes something to Scout’s perception of the world. Through her experiences she grows more tolerant of others, learning how to ” climb into another person’s skin and walk around in it. ” On her first day of school she finds that there are both social and poor classes in society, some are respectable and others not. She also learns that her father is an extra-ordinary man, fighting for a Negro’s rights in court. At the trial of Tom Robinson Scout learns about equality and inequality, about justice and injustice nd finally about racial prejudice.
Many times during the course of the novel the idea of the mockingbird comes to mind. We first hear of the bird when the children are given there first air rifles for Christmas, There father warns them to never shoot the songbird, saying to do so would be a sin. During the trial of Tom Robinson, it occurs to the reader that the Negro has many characteristics he shares with the mockingbird, He is a gentle man, who has never harmed anyone and only tried to help. His murder is as much a sin as the illing of any innocent creature.
By the end of the novel we see that the hermit Boo Radley is also like the mockingbird. He is shy and gentle, living quietly and harming no one. Near the end of the novel, Boo saves the children from being killed. Scout realizes that bringing Boo into the limelight would only be like killing the songbird. Many themes and ideas are presented in this novel, the sympathy theme is one of the main ones. Throughout the novel, Atticus repeats to Scout an Jem the importance of seeing things from another point of view in order to nderstand what the other person is feeling.
The theme of childhood is also another important one. The story takes place over a period of years, and the reader takes part in the adventure of the child growing up in a small Southern town. To Kill A Mockingbird is a fascinating story about a trial of a Negro man in a small Southern town. This novel is a must for every person to read because it not only displays the racial tensions in a small town and the effects it has on it’s citizens, but it displays it through the eyes of a young innocent, six year old child.
