Scout Finch

Scout Finch, formally Jean Louise Finch, is the narrator and protagonist of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960 and set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. A tomboyish, precocious young girl, Scout narrates the novel largely as an adult looking back on her childhood, recounting her and her brother Jem's fascination with their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley alongside the far graver events surrounding her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, who is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Through Scout's observant but still developing understanding, the novel examines racial injustice, moral courage and empathy in the segregated American South, with Atticus's conduct throughout the trial and its aftermath shaping Scout's own developing sense of right and wrong. Scout's voice, blending a child's directness with adult hindsight, is central to the novel's enduring status as one of the most widely read works of twentieth-century American fiction.