How does Harper Lee use point of view in To Kill a Mockingbird'? How does this use of the character, Scout as a naive child narrator allow the author to criticise a number of aspects of Alabaman society of the time?.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee, is a classic novel set in Alabama that describes the wrongful accusation and conviction of a Negro man named Tom Robinson. The story's point of view is told from the perspective of Scout, a six-year-old nave girl, who is too young to understand racism and prejudice. .
Scout Finch is not only the most important character in the novel, she is also the narrator. Everything that happens is seen through her eyes. Any author who sets out to write a first person story- one in which the narrator speaks of his or herself as "I"- has certain problems to face. This one character, the narrator, must know everything that happens in the novel. We can never see "inside the heads" of the other characters in the story. A nave character is less dependable and less accurate than an intelligent character and more limited in what she knows and understands "Scout, you aren't old enough to understand some things yet -. She does not understand everything she is telling the reader about and her opinion and interpretations are likely to vary widely from those of the author and reader. For example, when Scout refers to black people as niggers', she does not understand why it is wrong to say that.
Scout has no understanding of the complex web of racial prejudice that made so many white Southerners recoil in horror at the very idea of a Negro man raping a white woman.
Scout still has her innocence and has not yet been able to understand the concepts of racial discrimination or hate. Scout is confused by what some of her classmates have been saying about her father, Atticus Finch. However, she doesn't actually mind Atticus defending a black man; it is the comments, which other people make about Atticus, which disturb her.