How does Harper Lee prepare us in chapter 1 for what is to come in terms of plot, character, theme and style?

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How does Harper Lee prepare us in chapter 1 for what is to come in terms of plot, character, theme and style?

        Throughout ‘‘To Kill a Mockingbird’’ Harper Lee has achieved a strong sense of right and wrong through her narrative of a few years in a poor town, Maycomb, from the perspective of a young girl called Jean Louise Finch. Throughout the novel the themes growing up, education, stereotyping and most prominently racism and prejudice are central as Harper Lee writes about a time in America, the 1930’s, when black segregation was  still a huge problem. These themes are all raised from the very first chapter, where we are introduced to many characters, such as the imaginative Dill and the mysterious Boo Radley, both who play a key part in the events of the stories to come. At this very early stage of the novel Harper Lee also begins to set the scene of Maycomb town which is an old and struggling from the Depression  allowing the reader to understand the attitudes that some of the citizens have and the idea that it’s a community where there are no secrets.

        The very first sentence is very important to the structure of the novel. From this first sentence we learn that the narrator has a brother called Jem and he broke his arm when he was nearly thirteen. This early mention of an injury provides a sense of mystery because the reader immediately wants to know how Jem’s arm was broken. However Harper Lee doesn’t give us an explanation until the very end of the novel, in the last chapter after Scout and Jem have been attacked by Mr Ewell giving the novel a cyclic structure. The story begins where it ends. This enables Harper Lee to explain the events leading up to the accident in the following paragraphs so she can establish the history of the Finch family, which at this point doesn’t seem of great importance to the reader but as the novel continues provides explanations to the neighbours attitudes towards Scout, her brother and her father Atticus as the Finch family is well respected in Maycomb.  Scout describes her brothers healed left arm as ‘somewhat shorter than his right’ illustrating that even after mending it wasn’t perfect. Harper Lee informs us early on of this imperfection that Jem will have for the rest of his life.  In chapter nineteen at the trial we learn of another man who has a bad arm, Tom Robinson, a negro who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell had ‘a rubber-like left hand’, giving the impression of a useless, limp hand. Jem and Tom Robinson have a similarity which Harper Lee has cleverly added as it connects the two characters who socially shouldn’t mix as one is white and the other black. By doing this Harper Lee prepares us to be appalled by the unfair verdict of the trial because as a reader it is clear that Tom was unable to commit the crime since his left hand was useless and him being black meant that he was accused.

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        Harper Lee’s description of Maycomb sets the scene for the rest of the novel. The novel itself is not at a fast pace and covers a few years of Scout’s life. This slow pace is reflected in the description of the town ‘there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy for there was no money to buy it with’. The tri colon exaggerates the slow pace of life in Maycomb and the structured life that everyone within it lived with little variation.  From the first description it appears to be a place where everyone ...

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