To Kill a Mockingbird characters

Also known as Jean Louise Finch

Appears from the start

The novel's narrator, a young girl growing up in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression years. She tells the story from the point of view of childhood while looking back on it as an adult. Bright, quick-tempered, and more at ease in overalls than in a dress, she reads far beyond her age and questions the rules and prejudices of the grown-ups around her. She lives with her older brother and her widowed father, a lawyer, and spends her summers inventing games, many of them centered on the mysterious recluse who lives down the street.

Also known as Jeremy Atticus Finch

Appears from the start

Scout's older brother, about four years her senior. Imaginative and protective, he leads the children's games and their fascination with the shut-away neighbor. As the story goes on he grows more serious, drawn toward his father's work and increasingly troubled by the unfairness he begins to see in the town. He is eager to prove his courage and to be treated as older than he is.

Appears from the start

Scout and Jem's widowed father, a respected lawyer who also serves in the state legislature. Calm, principled, and patient, he raises his children largely by example, urging them to consider how the world looks to other people. He is appointed to defend a Black man accused of a serious crime, a task he takes on in earnest despite the anger it stirs among many of his neighbors.

Also known as Charles Baker Harris

Appears from the start

A small, imaginative boy who spends his summers in Maycomb with his aunt, next door to the Finches. He befriends Scout and Jem on his first visit and joins their games, especially their schemes to catch a glimpse of the reclusive neighbor. He comes from an unsettled family and often invents grand stories about himself.

Appears from the start

The Finches' cook and housekeeper, a Black woman who has worked for the family for years and helps raise Scout and Jem after their mother's death. Firm and exacting with the children, she is also devoted to them. She moves between the manners of the white household and those of her own community, and she teaches Scout things her father cannot.

Also known as Arthur Radley

Appears from the start

A neighbor who has not been seen outside his house for many years, the object of the children's fearful curiosity and of grim local legend. The town treats the Radley house as sinister, and Scout, Jem, and Dill trade rumors about the man shut inside, daring one another to approach it. Small gifts left in a knothole of a tree near the property hint at a hidden presence taking a quiet interest in the children.

First appears in chapter 5

A neighbor of the Finches and a friend to the children, a keen gardener with a sharp, kindly wit. She speaks plainly and honestly, thinks well of Atticus, and often helps Scout make sense of the townspeople and of her father's choices. She refuses to share the harsher judgments of some of her neighbors.

First appears in chapter 9

A Black man who works as a field hand and is accused of assaulting a young white woman. Atticus is appointed to defend him, a decision that stirs anger across Maycomb. Known in his own community as decent and hardworking, he becomes the center of a trial that lays bare the town's racial divisions.

First appears in chapter 17

The head of a poor, disreputable family living at the edge of town, and the father of the young woman at the center of the trial. Coarse and resentful, he brings the accusation against Tom Robinson and testifies against him. He takes offense easily and nurses his grievances.

First appears in chapter 13

Atticus's sister, who comes to stay with the Finch household to provide a feminine influence, especially for Scout. Concerned with family heritage and social propriety, she disapproves of Scout's tomboyish ways and clashes with the children's more relaxed upbringing, though she stands by the family in difficult moments.