preview

How Is Scout Portrayed In To Kill A Mockingbird

Decent Essays

The character that we will be discussing in this essay is Jean “Scout” Louis Finch, who will hereafter be referred to as Scout. Scout Finch is the female protagonist and narrator from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as from the movie of the same name. In this essay, we will be mainly focusing on how Scout is portrayed and characterized within the film. Scout begins the film being six years old and living in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb with her brother Jeremy “Jem” Finch and her widowed father Atticus Finch, who is the towns lawyer. The film follows Scout through three summers in the 1930s, during which her father defends a black man on trial for beating and raping a white woman. Another major event emphasized in To Kill a Mockingbird is the children’s interest in Arthur “Boo” Radley, a recluse in their neighborhood who the children, spurred on by town rumors of him having attacked his family when he was young, are afraid of and confused by until the end of the movie, where he saves Scout and Jem from an attack. Throughout the film we see Scout, a rambunctious “tomboy” who enjoys playing with her brother and summer neighbor Dill, go through childhood in a time plagued with racism, the Great Depression, and restricting gender roles. The theoretical approach that will be used in this paper to help analyze Scout’s personality is the Humanistic Approach. To do so, we will be looking at core beliefs such as personal responsibily and personal growth,

Get Access