Like a lot of people, I was introduced to the book To Kill a Mockingbird through the film, which I saw on television when I was three years old. Imagine my surprise when, many years later, I saw it again and realized that it was not the tale of two adventurous children dealing with a scary neighbor.

This illustrates very well what is perhaps the greatest genius of this book, its first-person point of view through the eyes of a child. From Scout's six-year-old perspective, author Harper Lee is able to present a totally objective narrative which would have been as impossible for the heroic Atticus Finch as for the villainous Bob Ewell . When Scout repeats an ugly racial slur to her father, she is mirroring both the open bigotry of many adults in her community and the hypocrisy of others who mask their bigotry behind pretensions of good manners. She is genuinely baffled by her teacher's repulsion for how Hitler is treating the Jews when it seems no different than the way her white neighbors treat her black neighbors. And when she tells us about the trial of Tom Robinson, her observations are not shaded by prejudices, or even by belief in his innocence or guilt. She is too young to comprehend what he has been charged with in the first place.

In short, our only witness to the events in the story is someone who does not fully understand them. This creates an unbiased point of view which leaves it to the reader to interpret the unfairness of the situation without any need for preaching on the part of the author. It seems like such an effective approach, maybe even more so for comedy than drama, that I'm curious to find other authors who have used it.