Setting Throughout Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean Louise “Scout” and Jem Finch spend their childhood in Maycomb County Alabama. Dill visits in the summer and they do adventurous things such as imagining the horror inside the mysterious Radley household.
The story takes place in the 1930s during the Depression Era and the time of segregation. This is truly shown when Jem and Scout’s playful childhood behavior gets turned completely upside down when their father, Atticus takes on a case that defends Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl.
Theme
The major theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is: Never judge a book by its cover. Throughout the novel, the people of Maycomb aren’t equal as a result of the other’s appearance.
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This is apparent when Cecil Jacobs speaks to Mrs. Gates, “ . . . Old Adolf has been after the Jews . . .” (280.) An alliteration is the repetition of the first letter of a world. An example of this is, “Professional people were poor” (23.) This also gives hindsight into the poor lives of the people of the time period. An onomatopoeia is when the sound mimics the action. “Punk, punk, punk her needle broke the taut circle” (156.) Scout was describing what her aunt was doing – sewing. Scout was describing the Radley household and the existence of the mysterious Boo Radley. A hyperbole is used as an over exaggeration in literature. “Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom” (9.) Verbal irony can be described simply as sarcasm can be found throughout To Kill a Mockingbird. “It was a happy cemetery” (135.) Scout describes the cemetery she was in and its surroundings. This cemetery was far from a happy place.
Genre
To Kill a Mockingbird can be classified as a sociological novel. According to A Handbook to Literature, a sociological novel “concentrates on the nature, function, and effect of the society in which characters live” (Harmon and Holman 487.) The novel encompasses around the segregation during the 1930s in the