To kill a Mockingbird part 1
1. What is the reason for the author's choice of a young narrator?
To give us a more innocent perspective of life and a different view from the usual adult`s view of things
2. How does Jem and Scout's views of Boo Radley change during part 1 of the book?
First they were afraid of him and think he was a dangerous and bad person. But then due to a seires of incidents and ocassions like when Jem found his trousers nice and tidy or when the brohers found gifts in a tree of the Radley house. All this and more lead the boys to start looking at Boo Radley better than before.
3. Atticus tells the children several times that they need to walk in someone else's shoes before judging the person. Describe times when Atticus, Scout or Jem walk in someone else's shoes. How does this change how they view the situations? What role does this advice play in sympathy and compassion?
Atticus has always tried to teach their children to be educated and not to bother anyone. One of the many possible examples of this, is what happened with Walter Cunningham. In the school, he didn't have anything for lunch, so the teacher tried to lend him money. But his values told him that he couldn't accept something he couldn't pay afterwards. In the break, Jem saw them and he invited Cunningham for lunch. While eating, Scout get angy with Cunnigham and she was sent to the kitchen by Atticus and Calpurnia, and Atticus told her to try to put in Walter shoes before criticising.
4. How do you think Atticus managed his role as a single parent?
Ithink that Atticus was a very good parent although a little bis distant. He always look the best for his sons and try to teach the his sons some good lessons about life. He was a very respected figure and let Scout and Jem do most of the time as they please, so in that way he could actually teach and make them learned their mistakes and get better.
5. Discuss race issues in part 1 of the book.
The novel describe a southern U.S. town where discrimination against Afro-Americans was very common. Therefore, when Atticus accept to defend Tom Robinson, a "negro", the whole town went into conmotion and dissaproved his decision and even Scout and Jem get bothered by other people in town because of his father defending a "negro", this was to the point even Atticus relatives and family bothered them.
6. From your reading of part 1, What does To Kill a Mockingbird teach us about how people cope with issues of race and class? Do you classify people in your world as different "folks?" Do you see those sort of distinctions today?
In the book thay speak a lot about discrimination and how bad it can turn to be, as the people in Maycomb get really angry with anything involving afro-americans and they discrimate them everytime. Nowadays although discrimination is not like in those times, we still tend to look a person as strange is he is different than us. For example we look at black or asian people as different and not like us, although in pther countries like Australia or New Zealand, there are people from a lot of cultures and no one is look as an inferior person.
7. Who is your favorite character from part 1 and why?
My favorite character from the novel at the moment is Scout, because she is young and innocent, therefore we can see how she develops and learned important lessons about life. Also this way we can look at how a young kid perceive things in general with is really interest, specially in this case considering she is living in the middle 20s, times where there still was a lot of discrimination and women still have less rights than men.
Now we are going to start looking deep into literature, but what`s literature? what can be considered literature? well, acording to Its definition literature is: "a highly developed use of language in that is the stylized manipulation of language for larger effect (purpose) and/or affect (emotional response)" (definition taken from the Language and Literature course companion book).
