Drama To Kill a Mockingbird Style, Point of View & Tone by Harper Lee
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The style of To Kill a Mockingbird is generally humorous and conversational, but also deceptively sophisticated, which reflects the mix of straightforward story-telling and complicated ideas. Because the book is framed as the recollection of the narrator, the opening pages use complex, elevated language: “brethren,” “dictum,” “impotent fury.” Once the narrator has set the scene, she reverts to a more childlike narration, mixing elegant metaphors (“it drew him as the moon draws water”) with frank statements (“Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.”) Language and speech play significant roles throughout the book. Scout and Jem misuse words, guess at the definition of words they don’t understand, and remark on their father’s “last-will-and-testament” diction and the elegant sentences of Miss Maudie. Language both reveals and conceals, as when Calpurnia’s grammar becomes “erratic” when she’s furious, or Dill tells lies to get the kids out of trouble. Atticus, a lawyer, trips his children up in their own narratives. The contrast between what people say and what they mean is echoed by the style of the story itself, which conceals adult subjects in the apparently simple story of children.
Often in the novel, Scout has a tendency to summarize—sometimes inaccurately—adult perspectives that she does not fully understand, providing insight into the other characters. Frequently, Scout’s inaccuracies draw out a hidden truth, as when she describes her aunt: “Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.” We can infer from this summary of Aunt Alexandra’s wishes that she wants Scout to become a surrogate wife for her widowed father, and that one of the concerns of the book is Scout’s conflicted passage from being a child to a woman. In these summaries, Scout mixes words or phrases we can assume came directly from the speaker – “ray of sunshine,” “lonely life” –with her own interpretation of their meaning.
Throughout, Scout presents herself as a wry, somewhat skeptical character accustomed to being misunderstood by, and keeping secrets from, adults. The exception to this is the reader, whom she addresses as a trusted confidant. In the passage about her aunt, Scout’s humorous exaggeration of Aunt Alexandra’s concerns creates an intimacy between the reader and Scout, who implies the reader understands her in a way her aunt does not. Many of the adults in the novel are presented as baffled by Scout, and children in general. Yet the style of the book is warm and confiding. This intimate, confessional style of narration creates an atmosphere of trust and reliability in the narrator. It also establishes Scout as a young, somewhat naïve character, who sees the adults in her world in simplistic, exaggerated terms.
To Kill a Mockingbird is written in the first person, with Jean “Scout” Finch acting as both the narrator and the protagonist of the novel. Because Scout is only six years old when the novel begins, and eight years old when it ends, she has an unusual perspective that plays an important role in the work’s meaning. In some ways, because she is so young, Scout is an unreliable narrator. Her innocence causes her to misunderstand and misinterpret things. She considers her father “feeble” because he is “nearly fifty,” which to a child seems ancient but to an adult is middle-aged. When Dill tells her he wants to “get us a baby,” Scout is unclear on how babies are made, thinking possibly God drops them down the chimney.
The reader often has to do the work of interpretation to understand what characters are actually talking about, or judge the severity of a situation. At the same time, Scout’s innocence makes her more trustworthy as a narrator than an adult might be, in that she lacks the sophistication to shape her story or withhold information for her own benefit.
While Scout remains the narrator throughout the book, her involvement in the events she describes changes once Tom Robinson’s trial becomes the focus. At this point, Scout becomes more of an observer. Although there are some moments when she plays an active role in the events, such as the scene where she and Jem stop the mob from storming the jailhouse before the trial, for the most part the protagonist of these scenes is her father, Atticus.
During the trial, lengthy passages are related directly as dialogue. Unlike the earlier summaries that Scout uses to describe events, here the story slows to follow the trial sentence-by-sentence. We have no reason to believe Scout is misinterpreting events, because her descriptions of the action are straightforward and largely visual. “Mr. Tate blinked and ran his hands through his hair,” “his legs were crossed and one arm was resting on the back of his chair.” The only indication of Scout’s inability to understand events is her faith that her father will win the trial. At the end of the novel, when the trial is over and Bob Ewell attacks Scout and Jem on Halloween, Scout is once more at the center of events.
The use of a child narrator enables the reader to see the action through fresh eyes, but Scout’s age also limits the narrative, especially in its treatment of race. While she understands Tom’s conviction is unfair, Scout accepts much of the institutionalized racism of the town. She sentimentalizes Calpurnia without considering how Calpurnia herself feels about devoting her entire life to the Finch family, at times sleeping on a cot in their kitchen and raising Scout and Jem as her own children. Atticus challenges some of Scout’s overtly racist statements, and corrects her in her use of the n-word.
But Lee presents other stereotypes without commentary, such as Scout’s statement “the sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside the Negroes,” or her observation “the warm, bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us,” or Jem’s suggestion that “colored folks” don’t show their age “because they can’t read.” Because there is no separation from the narrator and the protagonist, it is difficult to determine if Lee is critiquing or supporting Scout’s limited perspective on events. When reading the novel, it is important to remember it was written in 1960 and realize that while many aspects of Lee’s representation of racism remain relevant today, other aspects are dated and require further examination.
The tone of To Kill a Mockingbird changes over the course of the novel from chatty and innocent to dark and knowing as Scout loses a degree of her innocence. At the beginning of the novel, as Scout recounts a series of anecdotes describing growing up in a small Southern town, the tone is light and nostalgic. In these anecdotes, Scout recalls playing with her brother, Jem, and their friend Dill. Many of the anecdotes also focus on times when Scout learned an important lesson, such as her father scolding the kids for bothering their mysterious next-door neighbor, Boo Radley. Other examples of stories in this first section are the first time Scout sees snow, her first experience of school, or the time she and Jem invite a poorer classmate over for lunch. Reminiscences such as “somehow, it was hotter then,” and “it was a time of vague optimism” create the sense of nostalgic remembrance of a simpler, more innocent time. This sentimental tone creates a gauzy picture of the Depression-era South that will be undermined by the starker reality of the tensions revealed in the second half of the book.
After establishing a tone of folksy reminiscence, the narrative slows down to focus on the trial of Tom Robinson, and the tone becomes serious and foreboding. Seemingly harmless characters such as Mrs. Dubose and Mr. Cunningham turn menacing as Atticus’s decision to defend Tom Robinson incites their racist anger. When Scout and Jem observe Tom Robinson’s trial, the tone is solemn and the narrative is primarily focused on the trial proceedings, with little commentary from Scout. The tone of childish wonder is replaced by a more realistic, pessimistic view of the world, as when Scout remarks, “even the babies were still, and I suddenly wondered if they had been smothered at their mothers’ breasts,” symbolizing the death of Scout’s own innocence. The end of the book, when Bob Ewell attacks Scout and Jem, contains some humorous references to Scout’s school pageant and her enormous ham costume, but the attack is described in a frightening and dramatic tone. After Bob Ewell is killed, the tone remains serious, more melancholic than nostalgic, as Scout and Jem have learned difficult truths about the world.
