To Kill a Mockingbird: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

The opening of the novel effectively establishes a foundation for many of its themes. That Simon Finch had to leave England to escape religious persecution points to the existence of prejudice. But that Simon finds success and establishes a "plantation," which implies that he and his descendants owned slaves, points to the complications of good and evil: Simon who suffered prejudice goes on to build his fortune by practicing his own prejudice upon others. (That Atticus left the plantation to make his living also implies that Atticus' views about race and slavery differ from those of his ancestors.) Meanwhile, the fact that Atticus—and by extension, Jem and Scout—are related to most people in the county speaks to the nature of small-town Southern life: Maycomb is a close-knit and insular community. Scout's description of the town as old and tired further establishes the setting in which the story takes place—the Great Depression. Scout's language to describe the town also accomplishes something else, as well. A child is unlikely to either perceive or describe her hometown as being "tired." Scout's language, then, makes clear that Scout functions in the novel in two ways: as the child who is its main character, but also as the grown up narrator looking back on her younger self with more knowledge, more wisdom. Even though the adult narrator spends much of the book speaking through the voice of her younger self and describing the world through her younger self's eyes, by establishing both the child and adult Scout as presences right from the beginning, the opening of the novel introduces the idea that this will be a novel about young Scout's growing into her older self.

Scout likely finds Calpurnia tyrannical and one-dimensional because she’s so young and can’t yet understand Calpurnia as a complex individual. Dill and his imagination begin to situate these kinds of fantasy games as a hallmark of childhood in Mockingbird, while the fact that their games are based off of books indicates that all three children are literate. While this might not seem important to the children themselves, it does point to their financial situation and Atticus’s professional job, as they have enough money to live in a home that encourages education.

The beliefs that a phantom lives in the house and that everything is poisoned is clearly the work of young imaginations. But note where those rumors likely stem from: the Radley family is considered strange and even evil because they don’t socialize like most people in Maycomb. The particulars of Boo being kept at home, coupled with Calpurnia’s posthumous assessment of Mr. Radley’s character, suggests that the reason for their seclusion may have been abuse, but this seems to be beyond the children’s understanding.

Jem’s very real anxiety about touching Radley Place makes the case that as people ostracize others for being different and as rumors circulate, this inevitably turns into not an understanding of difference, but a genuine fear of people who are different. That this shows up in a child rather than an adult, however, does offer hope that Jem will be able to question this later.