The extract starts directly, ‘Maycomb was an old town’, this start clearly brings to the readers the central subject of the passage. The use of personification in the form of words like ‘old’ and ’tired’, puts human qualities in the town. ‘When I first knew it’ states the relationship between the town and the persona of the passage. Visual imagery is used to depict the physical features of the town such as the grass on the sidewalk. The recurring sound of ‘s’ emphasises on the monotony of the life in Maycomb through the words sagged, square and somehow. There is a tone of nostalgia established when the author states ‘when I first knew it, and ‘it was hotter then’ , this can suggest to the reader that the author has gone away from the town, has lost contact with it and is remembering it. There is a stark contrast in the themes established in two paragraphs. In the first paragraph there is a theme of struggle and hardship depicted, while in the second paragraph the author lays emphasis on the ‘vague optimism’ and the nothingness of the people. The use of ‘black dog suffered’ might suggest the practice of racial discrimination during that time period, it also shows how they suffered, and they normally worked in the cotton fields for the whites for very low wages as this story is set in the south of America. The words ‘people moved slowly then’ suggests the slow pace of the life of the people. The author use words such as ‘ambled’ shows how much time people had and how they did not have a lot of work. The punctuation marks such as commas add on to the use of caesuras in the passage which serves to break the pace of the passage.
Also the starling reference to the words of Franklin D Roosevelt, the former President of USA, ‘it had nothing to fear but fear itself’ can hint to the readers that the tough time of the Great Depression in the USA had just passed by. We can say that the laidback attitude of Maycomb can be a reflection of the attitude of the whole country which resulted in the downfall of the market and the downfall of the whole economy. The author mocks the attitude of the people and uses sarcasm to aid this. The use of complex sentences makes the passage monotonous and difficult to link consecutive sentences with.
Hence the author lucidly depicts the condition and the attitude of the people and successfully conveys to the readers the emotions and attitude of the author to the people through the use of diction, caesuras, anaphora, tone, structure, imagery and personification.
