Exposition in TKAM

Literary Analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird



         When most people think of a classic, works like “The Odyssey”, War and Peace, etc are the first to come to mind. These pieces are also commonly thought of as, to be frank, lengthy and dull to the majority. In comes Harper Lee, a heroine for classic literature. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that includes gossip, rivalries, dramatic trials, and even murder. But better yet, Lee’s inclusion of literary elements such as figurative language, characterization, and foreshadowing would win her book the coveted title of a classic-and a readable one at that! However, the most important literary element Lee included is the exposition-exposing the facts necessary to the reader, presenting the characters, and giving the setting. This allows the reader to simply understand the plot, characters, and underlying themes of the story.

         What is a story without setting? Lee’s use of exposition describing Maycomb, the town where the whole story takes place, is absolutely necessary for the reader to understand the novel:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square . . . People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but it seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. (5)

         Now that the reader has a little general knowledge of the main setting, they can do two things. First of all, one can make inferences based on the information given above. For one thing, since Maycomb is such a small place, gossip is bound to be the main form of entertainment. This will be a key part of the story later on-Maycomb’s perspective on innocent character’s such as Tom Robinson, (a supposed rapist,) and Boo Radley, ( a suspected murderer,) are twisted very easily since they are willing to soak up and spread any tidbit of hearsay they might get. Another skill one could use is connecting to things they have previously learned. For example, many people have heard of the Jim Crow Laws, laws that segregated blacks from whites and allowed whites to be the highly dominant race in society. These were in effect in the South in the 1930’s, which is exactly the time and place To Kill a Mockingbird is set in. By merely applying past knowledge and making inferences, the reader can use exposition to learn many new things about the setting and the people living in it.


         Lee also used exposition when she described another very important setting in the novel-the Radley Place:

         A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle while he walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chicken yard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked. (9)

This use of exposition is crucial because the reader can see how Maycomb as a whole-the adults and children-feel about the Radley Place, and in turn the Radleys themselves. The common belief is that since the property itself is weird, the people inside the house must be as well. Citizens of Maycomb loved to gossip about the family, and unsupported stories of murder made them weary to even walk by the house on the same side of the street. All of this ties into the books main theme, which is that just because people are different doesn’t mean you should discriminate against them. In the story, most of Maycomb’s citizens were not accepting of the Radley family simply because of the fact that they didn’t like to socialize! Somehow, all of this snowballed into the malicious rumors and superstitions surrounding their name. By reading this, one can see that Harper Lee is trying to express how ridiculous it is to discriminate simply because people are different. As you can tell, exposition does not only give the reader important background to understand the characters, but you can also use the information given to discover the underlying theme of the story.

         Finally, exposition can give a good idea of what the people who live in a certain setting are like. A great example of this is Lee’s depiction of the Ewell property:

         Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a negro cabin . . . the varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their labor, (those that were not eaten,) made the plot of ground around the cabin look the playground of an insane child: what passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rusty hammer heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing hoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire. (170)

The description of the Ewell cabin leads the reader to believe that the family does not make very much money, and that they don’t care much about their house’s appearance. This point is enforced when Jem, Scout, and Atticus ride by another setting in the story- the Negro cabins. Here an aroma of cooking food and the sight of a fire blazing can be witnessed. This, at first, seems strange because these people make just as much as the Ewells, yet somehow manage to use it to feed their children and keep their home comfortable. This forces the reader to come to the realization that the Ewells, on the other hand, have enough money to do so, but use it in an irresponsible manner to supply their father with his necessary amount of alcohol.
Another setting that serves as a contrast to the Ewell property is the Radley Place. Instead of there being odds and ends scattered about, the yard is completely barren. There are no signs of life-rather than a horde of children being constantly visible, the tenant of the house has not been seen for years.
Although both settings contain characters that are considered the outcasts of the story, the Ewell’s setting shows how irresponsible and unruly the family is, while in contrast the Radley house displays the timid nature of Boo. Although at first read exposition may seem to only be describing a setting, further analysis can lead you to new discoveries about a character’s personality.

         The use of exposition in To Kill a Mockingbird is essential for the reader to fully understand the story. By simply gaining knowledge about and comparing the settings, one can get a more accurate perspective on the characters as well as learning a theme of the story. Without exposition, Lee’s novel would most likely not have been deemed a classic.

*Author's note-I know that the titles should be underlined, this is just my first time using this site and I couldn't figure out how to do that.