To Kill a Mockingbird Review Analysis
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is regarded as one of the great pieces of literature of its time. It is universally respected because the author uses the common experience of growing up, through the eyes of his narrator Scout, to speak about intense topics such as racism, injustice, and prejudice in the Southern United States in the 1930’s. Atticus Finch states during the story, “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. Harper Lee helps us understand the issues that matter to him in To Kill a Mockingbird using the universal experience of growing up through the eyes and skin of a child, the main character and narrator, Scout Finch. In the beginning, Scout has a great deal of respect for her father, Atticus. Although, she has a tremendous amount of respect for him, her attitude toward him is self-centered and childish. She feels that he is an old man and can’t do very much.
After the trial of Tom Robinson however, Scout sees her father put himself in a very dangerous position, risking his life to fight for what he believes is right by defending an innocent black man in the racist south. Her father teaches her, “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life. ” Through this experience, Scout gains more respect for her father and realizes the sometimes harsh realities of the world she is living in, that life isn’t all childish games.
She sees that her father is a hardworking man with good morals, who does the right thing even if it’s hard and dangerous. In this way, we witness her point of view growing up. It is obvious in the first couple of chapters that Scout has very little patience for everyone and can lose her temper in an instant. For this reason, when people (mainly children) make her mad even just a little, that she gets in plenty of fights with them and ends up getting in trouble.
However, during an afternoon at her house with Aunt Alexandra and her missionary circle, Scout decides that she needs to learn to become a woman. The ladies wore powder and rose, smelled good, and gossiped over coffee cups and refreshments. Scout admits, “I wondered at the world of women… There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water. During this luncheon, it’s one of the first times in the story you see Scout attempt to choose her words more carefully and care what others were thinking of her. In this way, you see Scout attempting to have a more grown up manner of acting. Scouts ability to see the world through other people’s eyes changes throughout the course of the story, but finally at the end when she meets Boo Radley. At first, Scout and her brother Jem were very curious along with being scared of Boo Radley.
They wanted to see who he was so badly that they tried peeking into the Radley house but were unsuccessful. However, at the end when Boo saves Jem and Scout from being killed by Bob Ewell and Scout finally meets Boo, she realizes that he really isn’t a very bad or scary man after all. She walked Boo home and stood on the Radley front porch and saw the world from Boo’s point of view. A quote came from Atticus when Scout told him “he was real nice”, and Atticus replied: “Most people are Scout, when you finally see them”.
