Previous
Tone
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Young Scout:
Scout's childhood thoughts are often stated as fact, even if her adult self understands things differently. While Scout narrates the novel as an adult looking back on her childhood, she does not come across as a didactic narrator—on the contrary, she will often step back and present situations to the reader as they would have appeared to her childhood self. As a result, in many scenes Scout is an unreliable narrator, her thoughts presented to the reader as factual information despite being the misgivings of a child's mind.
One example of this occurs in Chapter 1, where Scout talks about the Radley House and Boo for the first time:
Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work.
While Scout is not entirely an unreliable narrator in this passage, she chooses to restrict her perspective so it coheres with that of her younger self. In doing so, she presents the gossip about Boo as factual—it would have appeared so, at least to young Scout. Her narration effectively draws the reader into her child's perspective and thus, in a way, helps the reader participate in her growing up.
Related Themes:
