What is the tone and the mood of To Kill a Mockingbird?
The tone and the mood in To kill a Mockingbird is changing throughout the novel. It transitions from innocent and chatty to dark as the character, Scout, loses a level of her innocence. The beginning of the book has Scout describing how it was growing in a small town. Here the tone is light, and the mood is nostalgic, as she recounts the first time she sees the snow, how her dad would scold kids who bothered their mysterious neighbour, and her early experiences in school.
After the establishment of a reminiscing tone, there is a transition to a more serious and forbidding tone in the narrative of Tom Robinson’s trial.
Later, the childish wonder tone is replaced with a more realistic tone to life, as Scout states, “even the babies were still, and I suddenly wondered if they had been smothered at their mother’s breasts,” a clear indication that Scout was no longer innocent. Towards the end, there is a frightening and dramatic tone as Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout’s enormous ham costumes used in their school pageant. The tone and the mood then go to serious and melancholic respectively as Bob gets killed, as Scout learns some brutal realities about life.