To Kill a Mockingbird Genre

Coming-Of-Age; Southern Gothic

To Kill a Mockingbird is first and foremost Scout’s coming-of-age story. Over the course of the novel she learns to act in a more adult way, even a more ladylike way, and to see the people around her as actual human beings. Jem, too, experiences a similar process, a few steps ahead of Scout. While the novel is about the particular growing pains of Scout, Jem, and even Dill, it’s also about growing up more generally. The novel asks, is it possible to become an adult, to join an adult community, and still keep a child’s sensitivity to injustice? While Scout and Jem face some disappointments as they learn more about how their world works, they also develop identities that might be able to hold back the world’s darker influences.

To Kill a Mockingbird also shares some characteristics with the Southern Gothic genre. It’s got a haunted house and a ghost (even if both turn out not to be as frightening as first thought), it’s got inexplicable evil (in the unprepossessing form of Bob Ewell), and it’s got terrifying nightmare encounters (the midnight raid on the Radley Place, Bob Ewell again). It’s also got ham costumes and being pantsless in public, though, so the potential horror of the novel is offset by its humor.