To Kill A Mockingbird Narrator Essay

Narrator To kill a mocking bird written by Harper Lee has been narrated by Scout Finch whose real name is Jean Louis Finch. Scout Finch is the youngest character in the story. The story is written in first-person but the interesting aspect of the narration is that the novel is told from both the childhood’s point of view as well as her adult and mature perspective. The adult narrator is reminiscing the memories of three years of her childhood. The novel begins when Scout is six and her brother Jem is ten years old. Using the flashbacks, the narrator tells us about the important details of her and her brother’s childhood. Scout tells us about the incidents that happened in her childhood and augmented this narration with thoughts

Maycomb is a small close-knit town in Alabama, a southern state in USA. It is a sleepy and poor town with a few people.

The Great Depression began with the Wall Street crash of October in 1929 and caused a decade of poverty, high unemployment, deflation, plunging farm incomes and lost opportunities.

Racism was rife during this period with racial segregation policies enforced across the southern states. Black people were victims of horrible prejudice and discrimination. They were mistreated and could not trust the police or the courts to protect them as they were often assumed guilty once they had been accused of a crime.

The small town of Maycomb was shown through the eyes of Scout Finch. She describes the town of Maycomb in rainy season as: “In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square.”

Maycomb is one of the rural towns situated in Deep South with its own distinct social hierarchy. It has established families like Finches, Crawfords, Haverfords and Atkinsons who live in a good residential area close to downtown Maycomb. The poor families that rely on farming as an occupation are scattered across the country living in places like “old

In an interview when asked about this, she exclaimed,” People are people anywhere you put them.”

But the setting and the characters are not the only things that contrast with the personal life of Lee. In 1931, when Harper was five year old, the trial of “Scottsboro boys” began in Alabama. Two white women accused nine black men of assault.

The medical evidence presented during the trial revealed that the women were not molested but the men still got convicted. All but the youngest were sentenced to death. After six years of trials during which one of the women ultimately changed her testimony and claimed that no rape had actually occurred, five out of nine men were convicted.

The study of Scottsboro trial will help enhance the understanding of readers of To Kill a Mocking bird. Both the fictional and historical trials took place in 1930s, both the accusers were white women and the defendants were African-American men. In both fictional and historical trials, the charge was rape.

Both the historical and fictional trails reflect the prevailing attitudes of time. The novel explores the social and legal problems that arise because of the racial