Who Is The Narrator In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, her choice of a narrator is a young girl named Scout. Scout tells the story of her life between the years of 1933 and 1936. The prominent characters in her story are Jem, her brother, Atticus, her father, Dill, her friend and “fiance”, and Arthur Radley, her shut-in neighbor. As Scout navigates her first years of school, the disheartening and melancholy trial of Tom Robinson, and the attack Bob Ewell carried out on her and her brother, the reader follows along and witnesses the different events through the thoughts and eyes of Scout. The life she described near the beginning of the novel was a placid and seldom eventful life. By the end of the novel, Scout and her close family and friends were put

The reader sees her school, family, and social lives the way a young person would. This would mean that the reader goes back to when emotion was a primary factor in decision making and trying to understand logical situations. The novel proves that emotions might affect children more than adults when Jem asks Atticus how a jury could decide on a man’s fate so easily. Tom Robinson, a black man from Maycomb, was accused of assaulting Mayella Ewell, Bob’s daughter. Despite the damning evidence of his innocence, the jury convicted him and sentenced him to death because he was a black man that allegedly violated a white woman. “‘How could they do it?’... Seems that only children weep. Good night,’” (Lee 243). All three children, Jem, Scout, and Dill, were deeply disturbed by the cold-blooded nature of the townsfolk they always saw as friendly and kind. However, according to Atticus, their prejudices and nasty behaviors were always on display, and the children never noticed simply because these behaviors did not have emotion behind them that the children understood. Subtle malice and hatred was often too casual in Maycomb for the young children to

The reader is given the opportunity to analyze the logistics and literal meaning behind the story while also being given the chance to see the subliminal meanings and true emotions behind the events of the text. The analysis of the text may be summed up in chapter 31, when Scout recaps all of the events of the story and connects them to the novel, The Gray Ghost, which Atticus was reading to her. The emotions of To Kill a Mockingbird come in many forms, including when Mr. Heck Tate, the sheriff of Maycomb, argued the innocence of Jem the night Bob Ewell was killed, despite Atticus’ protests. “‘It ain’t your decision, Mr. Finch… all he wanted to do was get him and his sister home safely… Let the dead bury the dead,’” (Lee 316-317). Mr. Tate was demanding that while Atticus may have thought Jem was responsible, he was never going to let Atticus take that to trial. For the sake of Jem and everybody else involved, he wanted to “let the dead bury the dead,” or let Bob Ewell’s death remain a mystery in order to keep everybody involved in the events of that night, Arthur Radley, Jem, and Scout, safe. Smaller moments like the one mentioned above are easier to see through Scout’s eyes because it does not involve too much speculation from the narrator. Additionally, it makes the novel more engaging because the emotional mind of a young child leaves little space for further speculation as to what the little