The narrators in each book have a large effect on the way you read the book. In To Kill A Mockingbird Scout is the narrator, and as she is young she gives a child’s perspective on the world around her. You read her thoughts and her misunderstandings of the events taking place, and you feel her growing up and seeing Jem grow up and becoming more detached from her. “Poor Peter” is told mainly by Miss Matty, an elderly lady, using more formal language and talking about what happened in a way that gives the impression she’d been thinking about it for many years, she had thought of what had happened from every persons view, and wasn’t telling it as one sided as Scout was.
The main characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are Scout, Jem, Atticus and Boo. They all represent different kinds of people, Boo – the neighbourhood outcast, the person people mocked and were scared of. Atticus – the martyr, who couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t do what was right, Scout – the naïve child trying to make sense of the world around her and Jem – the boy trying to grow up to be as respected as his father.
Boo was locked away for a very long time by his father, and was thought of by Maycomb as a spook, an evil, anti social man who lived in the dark, ate cats and poisoned the nuts that grew on his trees. Arthur “Boo” Radley had never done anything to deserve these titles except be different from the rest of the county. His father treated him badly and harshly when he got in trouble as a teenager, and as a result of this he became withdrawn from society. He spent his days looking down the street over the view of the neighbourhood, watching everybody else live their lives, even as they talk about him and play games that impersonate and mock him. Scout never understood how Boo could stand to stay inside his house with nothing to do (when talking to Miss Maudie, she asks “Yessum, but I’d wanta come out. Why doesn’t he?”) until she saw what he could see: “I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I have never seen our neighbourhood from this angle…In daylight I thought, you could see to the post office corner.”
Scout, the narrator, was very young and is comes across as a strong willed intelligent girl who isn’t at all stereotypical. This is something her Aunt wants to change and something Scout loves: “I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I felt like running away. Immediately.” She says things with deep meanings but in childish ways: “As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much left for us to learn, except possibly algebra.”
Jem, Scouts brother, tried to act very grown up throughout the book, trying to be brave and clever, and tried to act as though he had authority over Scout, as Atticus did. Scout hated when he did this, provoking fights between them: “Now I mean it Scout, you antagonise Aunty and I’ll – I’ll spank you”
Lee portrays Atticus to make him seem like a martyr, a man of high moral standard and someone who can only live with himself if he knows he has done the right thing. He is a widower trying to bring up two children well in a world of racism and prejudice. He doesn’t want Jem and Scout to believe what people say because it’s a common belief. This is shown when he tells them to stop tormenting Boo, and also when he defends Tom Robinson in court, not because he was made to but because it was the right thing to do. “This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes down to the essence of a man’s conscience – Scout, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to help that man.”
The main characters in “Poor Peter” (Cranford) are Peter, his mother, father and Miss Matty. Peter, a joker, was treated harshly by his father, and although at the time Peter’s father believed that “he richly deserved it” afterwards he regretted his actions and felt very guilty and remorseful, “He would, perhaps, speak in his old way – laying down the law, as it were – and then, in a minute or two, he would come round and put his hand on our shoulders, and ask us in a low voice if he had said anything to hurt us.” This was something that never happened to Arthur Radley’s father in To Kill A Mockingbird, because he never realised that he had ruined and traumatised his son’s life because of his own beliefs.
Peter’s mother was extremely traumatised by him leaving she died just over a year after he left. During the last year of her life she was grieving for Peter, expecting him to walk in, and eventually she couldn’t hold on to a feeble hope that he might come home to her. It was ironic that the day after she died the family received a parcel from Peter that could have given his mother happiness and peace of mind. She never got over him leaving, and the solution came a day too late. “But, you see, he saw what we did not – that it was killing my mother...ill-fitted to stand the shock she had gone through.”
Both books, Cranford and To Kill A Mockingbird were set around the 1930’s, and both seem to concentrate to a degree on stereotypes, and people going against what is expected of them. The area’s they are set in are in different countries, but still have similar societies. Both communities are mainly women and they both have very high social codes – if a member of the community was to break this code, they would be outcast, labelled as “trash” such as Mr Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He married a black woman and had mixed children. People looked down on him for this, and found it easier to label him as an alcoholic, because it was a more solid reason for them to give. “…I try to give ‘em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch on to a reason…folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey – that’s why he wont change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does.”
The authors Lee and Gaskell write about the way that people are punished for being different. If you do different from what is expected of you, if you break away from the normality that you live in, you are discriminated against. Tom Robinson was black, and lost his life because people couldn’t face admitting that the white people lied and the black man was right. Arthur Radley had a life of solitude because his father forced his beliefs upon him and punished him worse than the court had decided, Peter left his home down because he was an outsider, and after all he did he knew he couldn’t bare to disappoint his family anymore.
In To Kill A Mockingbird Scout also fights against the views of others. Her Aunt Alexandra wants Scout to be a little lady, whereas Scout wants to run around in the mud in her overalls, “Stay with us Jean Louise,’ she said. This was part of her campaign to teach me to be a lady”
In Cranford, Peter was described as a joker, he liked to play the fool and make people laugh. His father was very strict and didn’t think that Peter’s behaviour was gentlemanly. When Peter played a trick on his sister Deborah, he didn’t think of the consequences it would have: the embarrassment for his sister if people believed she had had a child outside of wedlock and the punishment placed upon him when he was found out and how ashamed and disappointed his family would be in him. “…and then he was very, very angry indeed, and before all the people he picked up his cane and flogged Peter!” Although Peter was extremely selfish and inconsiderate, his father reacted harshly to his actions. “Tell your mother I have flogged Peter, and that he richly deserved it.”
The way in which Peter’s father reacted to his behaviour is similar to the way that Arthur Radley’s father reacted to Boo’s rebellious behaviour as a teenager in To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee and Gaskell portray Boo and Peter in a way that gives an impression that they aren’t as bad as they seem, although they were mischievous and troublesome, they were good people. Boo was feared by all children, and many adults, but was proven to be a good man when he saved the lives of Jem and Scout. Even before Boo saved the children, a few people had not believed he was evil, as Atticus shows when he says: “I’m going to tell you one time: stop tormenting that man. That goes for the other two of you.” Peter was also said to be a very nice person, and although misguided in his actions he was still known as a nice young man: “What possessed our poor Peter I don’t know; he had the sweetest temper…”
Both societies treat rebels and jokers harshly. When Arthur Radley was a teenager, “nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr Radley that his boy was in with the wrong crowd” and he and his friends got drunk and arrested. A judge decided to send them to a state industrial school, which was no disgrace. But, Mr Radley was strongly religious, a “foot washing Baptist”
And Calpurnia called him Mr Radley thought it was. He made a deal with the judge to take his son home, and the rest of the boys got a very good education while Arthur was hidden away and not seen for over a decade. Because Arthur was never seen, he turned into more of a myth than a real person. Because the Radley house was different from the rest of the neighbourhood, (“The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays”) rumours started about Arthur, that he was locked in a basement with nothing to eat but cats, and anything on his land would kill you. The community didn’t accept different people very well, they thought they were evil or insane, and shunned them from the community. This also happened in Cranford. Peter felt that he had disappointed his family so much that he had to leave, and he was sorry that he had to. “Mother, I am come to say, God bless you for ever” ‘I saw his lips quiver as he spoke; and I think he durst not say anything more loving, for the purpose was in his heart’
