Analysis of To Kill A Mocking Bird Essay

Jean Louise Finch is the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee narrates the story describing her life between the ages of six and eight. She is tomboyish and therefore nicknamed Scout. Scout is well-educated mainly due to her father and has a positive view of the world around her. She stays with her widowed father, Atticus, her older brother, Jeremy Atticus Finch, and their black cook, Calpurnia in Maycomb, Alabama.

The narrative technique used in this novel is the first-person narrator stance in Jean Louise Finchs point of view. The first-person point of view refers to having a major character relating his or her story. In this case, Jean Louise Finch, hereafter known as Scout, narrates of her experience during a particularly tumultuous time in her hometown, Maycomb.

Scout as a young child has displayed her inquisitive and curious nature very well in the story, hence, the advantage in using Scouts point of view is that we are given every possible description in the most comprehensive manner. Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

Scouts account of the story is an honest and unbiased one due to her innocent youth. This is another plus of having Scout as the narrator, as we get a very honest and objective description of the issues. Scout tends to tell it as it is, without mincing her words for the sake of decorum. One of the best things about having a childs voice narrating the story is that the reader is assured of the use of simple language. Scout rarely dwells on long, grandiloquent words that many novels use to sound important.