To Kill A Mocking Bird-Narrative Style

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The strongest element of style noted by critics and reviewers is Lee's talent for narration. Our first-person narrator is Scout Finch, who is five when the story begins and eight when it ends. From the first chapter, though, it’s clear that Scout is remembering and narrating these events much later – after all, the second paragraph of the novel begins, "When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his (Jem’s) accident". Lee combines the narrator's voice of a child observing her surroundings with a grown woman's reflecting on her childhood, using the ambiguity of this voice combined with the narrative technique of flashback to play intricately with perspectives. This narrative method allows Lee to tell a "delightfully deceptive" story that mixes the simplicity of childhood observation with adult situations complicated by hidden motivations and unquestioned tradition. However, at times the blending causes reviewers to question Scout's preternatural vocabulary and depth of understanding. Literary critics have expressed doubt that children as sheltered as Scout and Jem could understand the complexities and horrors involved in the trial for Tom Robinson's life. The story, however, is recalled by the adult Scout; this allows her first-person narrative to contain adult language and adult insights yet still maintain the innocent outlook of a child. The adult perspective also adds a measure of hindsight to the tale, allowing for a deeper examination of events. The narrative proceeds in a straightforward and linear fashion, only jumping in time when relating past events as background to some present occurrence. Scout's account is broken into two parts: the two years before the trial, and the summer of the trial and the autumn that follows. Some critics have proposed that Part II itself should have been

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