How does Harper Lee use details in the passage to show the reader
what Maycomb is like in Chapter 1?
In her description of the town in chaptee 1, Harper Lee makes gives Maycomb a very negative atmosphere. She repeats the adjective “old” to emphasize how dull and unexciting it is. She personifies the town by saying it was “tired”, giving it a slow, aimless feel. The long sentences are punctuated with lots of semicolons and commas; every time you think one of the sentences will end it carries on. The sentences reflect life at Maycomb, even though they are long and dwindling, they lead to no real conclusion. Moreover, the sentences contain lots of alliteration and sibilance, for example “flicked flies”, and “sagged on the square”. This technique possibly reflects daily life in Maycomb: repetitive and unsurprising, making the town, in the readers mind, a stereotypical southern town. Another way Lee accentuates the sluggish pace in this town is the verbs he uses when describing the people of Maycomb: the words “ambled” and “shuffled” emphasize the leisurely lives the people lead, and how well the town and the residents suit eachother, or maybe how mch they affect eachother. The sentence “a day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer” shows the reader even time was drawn-out here, and life would have to be very tedious to wish there were less hours in a day.
The heat may be another cause of the pessimistic feel of Maycomb; in the clause “mens stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning”, the contrast between “stiff” and “wilted” shows the reader that the heat is powerful and controlling, capable of mild forms of destruction and decreasing the speed of activities, typical of the Alabama area. This quote also show the towns old fashioned values: men wore stiff collars, women talcum powder.Even areas sheltered from the sun are hot; the shade is “sweltering”, implying the areas out of the shade are unbearable.The prefix/word no is repeated often, showing the reader a complete lack of happiness. However there is a sudden change in the tone of the chapter, “a time of vague optimism” contradicts the depressive style of the previous description of Maycomb, making the reader wonder how life in this seemingly awful town could possibly lead to optimism. The phrase “it had nothing to fear but fear itself” possibly derives from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech, made after the 1932 presidential election, during the great depression. Maycomb has no real enemy or threat apart from the damaging affect of fear: prejudice, violence and sadness, which gives the reader the impression that the people of Maycomb have brought their sadness upon themselves.
