To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 1 Summary: A young girl named Jean Louise Finch, who is almost always called by her nickname, Scout, tells the story. Scout starts to explain how her older brother Jem broke his arm many years ago. She starts by telling the story of her family. Simon Finch, a fur trader and apothecary, was the first of her ancestors to come to America. He left England to avoid religious persecution and set up a successful farm on the banks of the Alabama River. The family lived for many years on the farm, which was called Finch’s Landing. Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, became a lawyer in the nearby town of Maycomb, and his brother, Jack Finch, went to medical school in Boston. They were the first members of the Finch family to find work away from the farm. Alexandra Finch, their sister, stayed to run the Landing.
Atticus is a successful lawyer living in Maycomb, a tired, poor, old town in the middle of the Great Depression. He lives with Jem and Scout on the main street where people live in Maycomb. Calpurnia, their old black cook, helps take care of the kids and keep the house clean. Scout was only two years old when Atticus’s wife died, so she doesn’t remember her mother very well. But Jem, who is four years older than Scout, sometimes feels sad when he thinks about their mother.
When Jem is almost ten and Scout is almost six, in the summer of 1933, a strange boy named Charles Baker Harris moves in next door. The boy, named Dill, spends the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel Haverford, who lives in the house next to the Finch’s. Dill doesn’t like to talk about the fact that his father isn’t in his life, but he is a very talkative and smart boy who quickly becomes the Finch kids’ best playmate. The three of them act out different stories they have read all summer. When they get tired of this, Dill suggests that they try to get their strange neighbour Boo Radley out of his house.
Arthur “Boo” Radley lives in the run-down Radley Place, and no one has seen him outside in years. Scout tells how, when Boo was a child, he broke the law and his father locked him in the house as a punishment. He wasn’t seen or heard from again for 15 years, when he used scissors to stab his father. Even though people said Boo was crazy, old Mr. Radley wouldn’t let them put him in an asylum. Boo’s brother Nathan moved in with him when the old man died. Still, Boo stayed inside.
Dill is very interested in Boo and tries to get the Finch kids to help him get this ghost out of Maycomb. He finally dares Jem to run up to the house and touch it. Jem does this and runs back quickly. There is no sign of movement at Radley Place, but Scout thinks she sees a shutter move slightly, as if someone were peeking out.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place almost entirely between Scout Finch’s fifth and ninth birthdays. However, Scout probably starts the first-person story that opens the book much later in her life. So, the story is told from both the child’s point of view as things happen and the adult’s point of view when she looks back on her childhood many years later. The main plot is told in the child’s naive voice, which lets the reader make connections and understand what’s going on in a way that Scout doesn’t. At the same time, the story often veers off into anecdotes or descriptions of the past, like Scout’s description of Maycomb in the first chapter: “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.” Somehow, it seemed hotter back then… “Back then, people moved slowly.” In this case, Lee’s words sound more like an adult’s memory than a girl’s.
To Kill a Mockingbird is made up of a circle: the story starts where it ends. In the first line of the book, Jem’s broken arm is mentioned. The story then goes back in time to show what happened before his accident. This is how the narrator gives background information about the Finch family, introducing the legendary Simon Finch and his three children. But at this point in the book, the family history is just background information, and the private lives of the young Finch children are more important. In this way, the first chapter only briefly introduces Atticus, who becomes more important as the book goes on. Jem and Scout are at the centre of the story. They fill it with their world of imagination and superstition, which is based on town legends like the strange history of Boo Radley and creative activities like acting out books.
Dill is the main character in this early part of the book. He is only in Maycomb for the summer and has no ties to the adult world there. As the adult world becomes more important in the story, Dill becomes less important. For now, though, the book focuses on Dill’s childhood and only hints at the darker, more adult problems that will start affecting Jem and Scout. To Kill a Mockingbird is about growing up and getting a more mature view of life. This is one of the book’s main themes. In the same way, the story becomes more and more like a loss of innocence as the carefree childhood of the first chapter gives way to a darker, more dangerous, and more cynical adult story in which the children play a small role.
In Chapter 1, the children are most interested in Boo Radley. As is fitting for a child’s innocent point of view, the recluse has no other identity than what the children believe about him: Scout calls him a “malevolent phantom” who is over six feet tall and eats squirrels and cats. The reader knows that Boo’s story must be about more than what these superstitions show. Boo will eventually go from being a bad guy in nightmares to being a person, and the kids’ understanding of him will mirror their own path to becoming adults.
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