Techniques and Themes in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

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Techniques and Themes in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

        Harper Lee effectively creates a sense of atmosphere by building up tension with fast paced events that happen suddenly and unexpectedly. She uses relaxed dialogue as a source of background information, and varies the sentence structures and lengths to keep the storyline and the writing itself interesting.  To add to the atmosphere, she makes great use of cliff-hangers at the end of various chapters, such as at the end of chapter four – “Someone inside the house was laughing.” – and the end of chapter six – “I did not hear him stir again.” This is very effective since it makes the reader want to read on and learn more, creating an atmosphere of mystery and lack of awareness of the events. Rather than telling the reader what is happening, as commonly occurs in novels, she keeps major pieces of information from the reader, enabling the eventual revelations which occur bit-by-bit to be more shocking and surprising to the reader.

In addition to this, Harper Lee makes use of gothic imagery, adding highly unusual occurrences to the plot – such as the snow, the mad dog in February, and the fire that destroys Miss Maudie’s house – not only to make the book more interesting, but also to emphasise the drama and to add to the sense of atmosphere. They are all so out of place, that in the end, these elements all add together to heavily foreshadow the dark events surrounding and following Tom Robinson’s trial. They also unfortunately portray Maycomb as an unusually busy place (we do not see it as it normally is, apart from in the introduction), meaning that the town does have a slightly unrealistic dimension to it.

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        The author describes the Finch family’s situation and surroundings effectively, using adjectives such as ‘high’, ‘meditative’, and ‘pale’ to emphasise her point and to get her message across. The widespread use of the adjectives also serve to paint a better picture of the situation in the reader’s mind, making it easier for us to imagine certain things, such as Mrs Dubose’s house – the use of phrases such as “oppressive odour”, “rain-rotted grey houses”, and “soot-stained mantelpiece”.

        Additionally, Harper Lee uses many metaphors and similes throughout her descriptive work to pain the surroundings for the reader. She uses the metaphor ...

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