To Kill A Mockingbird Adult Perspective Essay

When looking at a story, a child can often reveal oversights that an adult can not. Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, uses her characters of Scout, Miss. Caroline, Calpurnia, and Mr. Dolphus Raymond to highlight an outside view of adult community through Scout’s narration. In the book, Scout encounters three situations where her child perspective shapes how the reader understands and interprets these adult situations: Calpurnia’s change in demeanour when at the Negro church, Miss. Caroline 's encounter with Walter Cunningham, and Scout’s conversation with Mr. Dolphus Raymond. Harper Lee uses these three situations in her novel to make blatantly clear, a lesson on the faults of adult community; lying to each other in order to feign comfort within one another.

An example of this, is the fault Scout recognized in Calpurnia when she lies about her speech potential by conforming to the way of speaking common in the Negro church. During the outburst from Lula due to Calpurnia arriving at the Negro church with Jem and Scout, Scout says this about Calpurnia’s reaction, “ {...} she asked in tones I had never heard her use. {...} Again I thought her voice strange; she was talking like the rest of

To conclude, in To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee shows clearly through Scout’s innocent, child perspective that the adult community deceives one another to keep a sense of comfort. We see this in: Calpurnia’s deception of speech with the Negro community to keep a sense of equality/comfort, Miss. Caroline’s self-deception about Walter Cunningham 's lunch situation to preserve her sense of a comfortable class community, and Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s confession of a false reputation so that the town’s community could find comfort in dismissing his lifestyle on that excuse. Through the lesson Harper Lee portrays throughout her novel readers are now able to see the lies in the communities they keep in daily life, and whether the comfort is a reality or just blinders to the