To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee :: essays research papers

Miss Harper Lee has chosen Scout as a prototypic person narrator in this report card. This narrative technique has many strengths and some weaknesses. Scout is a bright, sensitive and intelligent little girl. For all her intelligence, she is still a child and does not always fully understand the implications of the events she reports. This is sometimes amusing, as the time she thinks Miss Maudies loud voice sc ars Miss Stephanie. Scout does her best to communicate us of the happenings at the Tom Robinson trial. Yet, she is not certain what rape is, and is neither aware of the prejudice state surrounding her. Ultimately she represents the innocence within society.In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout Finch, a little girl growing up in a small Southern town, tells the story of her childhood, when she witnessed the trial of a total darkness falsely accused of raping a white woman. The Negros lawyer is Scouts father, Atticus Finch. He defends the Negro vigorously, though he expects to los e the case. As well as being the story of childhood, it is also the story of the struggle for equality of the American Negro.To Kill A Mockingbird can be read as the story of a childs growth and maturation. Almost every incident in the novel contributes something to Scouts perception of the world. Through her experiences she grows more tolerant of others, learning how to " climb into another persons genuflect and walk around in it." On her first day of school she finds that there are both social and poor classes in society, some are respectable and others not. She also learns that her father is an extra-ordinary man, fighting for a Negros rights in court. At the trial of Tom Robinson Scout learns about equality and inequality, about justice and unfairness and finally about racial prejudice.Many times during the course of the novel the idea of the mockingbird comes to mind. We first hear of the bird when the children are given there first air rifles for Christmas, There fa ther warns them to never shoot the songbird, saying to do so would be a sin. During the trial of Tom Robinson, it occurs to the reader that the Negro has many characteristics he shares with the mockingbird, He is a gentle man, who has never harmed anyone and only tried to help. His murder is as much a sin as the kill of any innocent creature.