English - To kill a mockingbird - First entry
Kategori: Allmänt
This novel takes place during the thirties in a town called Maycomb City. Maycomb City is set in the south part of the United States of America were the population is mainly light skinned people. In this time, dark skined people where still treated as slaves or simply just bad persons. For example, the main characters has a made at home. Her name is Calpurnia and she's a dark skinned person who works for the Finch family.
The main characters in the book are Jean Louise Finch (aka Scout and also the narrator in the book) and her older brother Jeremy Atticus Finch (aka Jem). Scout is a very young girl who just started the first grade in school, but the thing that makes her stand out from all the characters, is that she acts exactly like a boy. She resist to wear the garments that are specifically made for women in this age. For instance, she refuses to put on a dress in public, instead, she prefer to wear a pair of trousers because she consider that the pants are more useful while playing with her brother Jem. This indicates that Scout has a really strong will and confidence, a little to strong sometimes. She's pretty disrespectful against some people also she uses mocking words that are appropriate for a girl in this age. On the other hand, she's a whole other person when she communicate with her father. You sense that she has a huge amount of respect for him, by the change of her speaking. Such as, she uses the word "sir" instead of dad or his real name. Though, she also treat her brother the same. I believe this is because she sees her older brother as a role model in her life. Her brother has always been there for her sense their mum passed away when Scout was only to years old.
Jeremy Atticus Finch, a truthful playmate to his sister during the beginning of the novel. Although, he gets older and more mature therefore not as much playing. He has instead taking the role as an protector and a close companion to Scout. Above that, he's just an ordinary american teenage boy, pretty stubborn and he wouldn't say no to a dare or a challenge. Like that time when his neighbour Dill dared him to just touch the mysterious house (the Radley place). Even though he was so scared, he did not admit it and fulfilled his dare.
The characters seems very real to me, and their behaviour are very believable for this time period. Also, there language and expressions are not the same as we have today. For example in the book it says "I beg your pardon.." (p.22 line. 22), when we know only say "sorry".
Below, we have a family tree and names of characters that are mentioned in the novel.
To describe the characters how I think they look, with just knowing about their personalities and experience, is very difficult and all the figures will be based on my feelings. I get this picture that Scout is a short, thin girl who's hair is blond and short. Therefor, she seems like the girl who doesn't have the energy to care about her appearance and with short hair. Short hair is easily taken care of and is not in the way while playing as she does often in the book.
Jem is the hardest one to describe, because I haven't get any clear vision of him while reading. I'll guess that he has a normal build body and light hair as his sister. His clothes are very simple with just a pair of pants and a T-shirt for example.
Atticus Finch who's the father, I feel that he is around 30 to 40 years old and have a pretty muscular body. The reason for this is because when the house next to them caught fire, he helped the resisting people to carry out important furnitures from the burning house, for example a heavy rocking chair. Other than that, I don't "know" any more of his appearance.
I feel that the book, so far, are not very cohesive, therefor it's hard to tell what's going to happen next. My thoughts are that it's going to occur a conflict/problem with dark skined people involved. The last chapter I read, they mentioned the darker skined people as if they where a problem. I'm extremely curious what's going to happen in the following pages and chapters.
