Children’s Narration In To Kill A Mockingbird

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which is based on the background of theGreat Depression, profoundly exposes the entrenched racial discrimination, rigidcaste system and such backward ideas rooted in American southern society. However,such serious themes are not presented in the usual way of the tempest moralizationbut by taking a devious narrative technique—children’s narration—to unmaskambivalent aspects of the turbulence underlying southern society. Under the guidanceof the theory of narratology, analyzing children’s narration, dual perspective and theirunique narrative effects, this thesis attempts to argue that Harper Lee’s choice ofchildren’s narration not only carves the way of narrative, but meets the need of theinner emotion expression of the author.This thesis can be divided into three main chapters, excluding the introductionand the conclusion. The first chapter discusses the concept of children’s perspectiveand analyzes the children’s inborn features of striping the disguised rationalizationand restoring the truth, putting forward that with the filtration of children’sperspective, various social bigotries can be presented truthfully and objectively. Thesecond chapter is devoted to the foil of the children’s perspective—adult’sperspective which is in the form of implied author to achieve the complementation ofnarration. The third chapter mainly analyzes the roles of the dual perspective andchildren’s narration. Finally, it leads to a natural conclusion that the choice ofchildren’s narration not merely reveals the backward ideas of southern Americanartfully as well as bears the author’s expectation towards her homeland.