Mockingbirds
The title of the book is To Kill a Mockingbird, so mockingbirds must be important, right? But why? Let’s look at a few passages to tr...Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the fictional small Southern town of Maycomb in the 1930s (Tom’s trial takes pl...First Person (Central Narrator)
Our first-person narrator is Scout Finch, who is five when the story begins and eight when it ends. From the first chapter, tho...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...Naïve, Ironic
How can the tone be both naïve and ironic? Cue Scout, talking about Aunt Alexandra.
I never understood her preoccupation with...Factual
Scout’s narration usually doesn’t comment much on the action, just presents what happens as a series of facts. Here’s an example.
...The title of To Kill a Mockingbird comes from something both Atticus and Miss Maudie tell Jem and Scout: “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (10.7, 10.9). There’s more...
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” – Charles Lamb
First off, it’s from an essay by Charles Lamb, an English writer in the late-18th and early-19th centu...
With Ewell out of the way, all is smooth sailing for the Finches, right? Well, perhaps. While Ewell’s death may end the immediate threat to their well-being, there’s a whole lot of Mayc...