To Kill A Mockingbird: Why Scout is the Narrator
Her youth, her innocence, acute sense of justice and naive point of view, these are all the reasons why Scout is the narrator of the novel. She is just an innocent child when the story begins, yet we get to see her grow up and see how everything that happens around her makes her change and grow up. She believes that there is only right and wrong, if it is clearly shown that somebody did nothing wrong then they should not be punished. She is a fresh pair of eyes in the world and does not really understand things the way her seniors do. All of this really connects to the loss of virtue that that Harper Lee really tries to convey in the novel.
Because Scout is young and still has not had any experience in the real world she really learns many life lessons, one that clearly shows this is in chapter twenty-one, page 282 when Tom is found guilty by the jury and she just has to realize that every life lesson that Atticus has taught her might not always work in life and that other people do not live by the same rules. An example of this is in page 294 where Atticus elaborates “As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.” This describes Bob Ewell’s case with Tom Robinson because he cheated him and he did not care if that made him “trash”. This is connected to the novel’s theme loss of innocence because Scout’s childhood, it is marked with Tom’s trial and she has to hold on to her purity and morals, which is another reason she is the narrator. She really shows the struggle of loss of integrity and morals. With youth comes a naive nature and the belief that everyone in the world is similar.
A representation of her ingenuous nature is at the end of chapter 23, page 304 where Scout asserts “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” This demonstrates that she does not believe in the differences in classes and that nobody is better than anybody else and this also proves that no one perspective that no other character could provide. This is also inconsistent to Jem’s point of view and this is shown when he replies “That’s what I thought too, when I was your age. If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike why do they get along with each other? I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all the time… it’s because he wants to stay inside.
” Jem is older than Scout and has realized that although people might be similar to each other, they still have the desire to harm each other and that it might be better to be disconnected from the world, like Boo than to live in it. This is also another perspective that that no other character could provide and connects to the novels theme loss of innocence. There could be no other character better than Scout to be the narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird because she really invokes innocence and the need to preserve it, which consequently is an overall theme of the novel. She really makes the reader feel like a child again and although she is ignorant to the full view of most of the problems that occur she has a way of making the reader understand everything that happens.
