To Kill a Mockingbird

Scout is the narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird. She is a child in 1933, when much of the novel’s action is set, but she narrates the novel’s story as an adult looking back on that time. The events of the book are thus described in the dual tone of a mature, experienced person and a child who is discovering, exploring, and just beginning to form ideas about the world around her.

Though her formal name is Jean Louise Finch, Scout prefers to be called by her nickname. She also prefers to wear pants and play outside with her brother, Jem, and her best friend, Dill. Highly literate and disdainful toward public education, Scout values time spent reading at home with her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, over the lessons taught by her female teachers. Nevertheless, over the course of the novel, she grows in her relationships with women (including the Finch’s cook, Calpurnia, and their neighbor, Miss Maudie). Through these relationships, she discovers the unique roles and responsibilities held by women, to the extent that she declares her desire to become “a lady” (271) in Chapter 24.

Scout also grows in her sense of justice, demonstrating increasing maturity in her responses to wrongdoing.