To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Maycomb, Alabama, during the 1930s. As a result, two significant cultural periods in American history helped set the stage for the novel: the Great Depression and the Jim Crow era.
The novel reflects the poverty resulting from the Great Depression; it affects all the residents of Maycomb, even the Finches, who are still living in poverty, although more economically advantaged than their neighbors.
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Jim Crow
The time period the novel takes place in also indicates the Jim Crow era, which describes how laws limited black citizens' political and socio-economic possibilities from the late 1800s until made illegal in the mid-1960s. It is also important to remember that the author, Harper Lee, wrote the novel in the late 1950s-- the Great Depression was over, but the effects of Jim Crow were still visible, especially in the South.
Note: While Maycomb itself is a fictional town, Lee based it on her birthplace and childhood home (Monroeville, Alabama.) She replicates many of her hometown's characteristics in her depiction of Maycomb, such as the large farmer population present and the glaring racial disparities that help set the tone for her story.
Setting
As noted previously, Maycomb isn't a real town but functions as a representation of an average 1930s Southern town-- Scout describes her surroundings as tired and suffocating, further shown in how the town is diseased by social prejudices in general, racism in particular.
Summary
To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by Jean Lousie Finch, a young girl who is more frequently called Scout. She begins by talking about how her older brother, Jem, broke his arm many years earlier. Later, she moves on to recounting her family history.
Meeting the Finches
She recalls the first of her ancestors to come to America, an apothecary named Simon Finch, who established the family farm, called Finch's Landing, near the Alabama River. The first member of the family to leave the farm was Scout's father, Atticus Finch, to become a lawyer in Maycomb. He now lives with Jem and Scout in the same city and their cook, an old black woman named Calpurnia. Atticus's wife died when Scout was two.
Their New Neighbor
When Jem is 9 and Scout is 5, in the summer of 1933, a new boy named Charles Baker Harris moves in next door-- he goes by Dill. He is staying for the summer with his aunt. The three play together all summer, acting out different stories. But when they get bored, Dill suggests that they try to lure Boo Radley out of his house.
Maycomb’s Mystery
Arthur "Boo" Radley is their mysterious next-door neighbor who no one has seen outside in years. Scout recalls how Boo got in trouble with the police when he was young and was imprisoned in the house by his father as punishment. The next time anyone heard of him was when he stabbed his father with a pair of scissors, but Mr. Radley still refused to have his son put in a mental asylum. After his father's passing, Boo now lives with his brother, Nathan, but continues to stay inside.
Dill tries to convince Scout and Jem to help him lure Boo out of his house, daring Jem to run over and touch his house. Jem does, and Scout thinks she sees a shutter move slightly, almost as if someone was peeking out.
Analysis
The story is told entirely from Scout's point of view, as she looks back upon her childhood many years later. As a result, the voice constantly switches between the child's point of view, describing the events as they happened in the past, and the adult voice, which looks back years later. In this way, the audience gets to see how the events in the novel force Scout to grow up in a way, revealing one of the central themes of To Kill a Mockingbird: the process of growing up and developing a more mature outlook.
As the story begins here in Chapter 1, Jem and Scout are at the center, and the focus of the story is on mythical aspects such as the history of Boo Radley and their ways of passing the time by acting out stories from books. Atticus is relegated to being a background character up until this point, but his importance increases as the novel progresses.
The narrative throughout the story also shows a loss of innocence in this way. The young, carefree main characters depicted in this chapter slowly progress into a darker, more adult account where the children are no longer at the center and are now forced to face life's harsh realities.
The novel begins with Scout remembering the events that led to his brother, Jem, breaking his arm when he was around 13 years old. She gives the readers a background of her family which is a very long line of southerners that trace their origin from a fur trader called Simon Finch from Cornwall, England. She narrates how Finch moved up the Alabama River after crossing the Atlantic and settled in Finch's Landing, 40 miles above Saint Stephens, Alabama, where her father Atticus and his two siblings were raised.
Scout then recounts back to present day Maycomb, Alabama, where she lives with her father who is widowed, ten-year-old Jem and their family cook Calpurnia. It is summertime, and there is a lot to do so six year old Scout, and Jem play around the house, but not further than the boundaries Calpurnia has forbidden them not to roam past. Their neighborhood is introduced here, including the Radley Place. The Radleys, living three doors down from Finch home, had a younger boy named Arthur (Boo) who got involved with the wrong crowd and got sentenced to a state school. His father Mr. Radley asked the judge to release Boo into his custody and placed him under house arrest for 15 years.
One day Boo stabbed Mr. Radley in the leg with scissors, and he stormed out of the house shouting that Boo was hell bent on killing them. The police were called and found Boo working on his scrapbook and locked him away in a courtroom basement. He was later released back into house arrest, and when Mr. Radley died, his older son Nathan came back home from Florida to keep Boo under house arrest. For years the stories about Boo and Radley became more exaggerated, but the people of Maycomb remained scared of the Radleys. Boo was claimed to roam at night, crimes all over town were attributed to Boo, plants that died from the cold were said to have been breathed on by Boo, and pecans which fell from Radley trees were deemed as poisonous. When Jem and Scout meet Charles Baker Harris (Dill), who moved next door with his aunt Rachel Haverford, he becomes interested in the stories, strikes an instant friendship with the two brothers and makes a planned attempt and lures Boo out of the house.