How Does Harper Lee Use Darkness In To Kill A Mockingbird

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In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird she commands characters’ confusion in chapter 15 through not only her mood-setting chiaroscuro, interplay of light and dark, but also the coincidence and intention of her continuous reference to “crowds.”
While chapter 15 gets underway, the readers are cautioned from Scout, the narrator, that “a nightmare was upon” the Finch family. As dinner was finishing a crowd of men collected outside the Finch’s home. Atticus tells his children to “go back in the house” and Harper Lee creates this ominous mood as Jem “turns out the living room lights” and the “crowd of men were standing around Atticus.” The readers from Jem’s creation of darkness can allude to Lee’s formation of a sinister mood and the readers can