The opening chapters of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird establish a tone immediately as the narrator looks back to a time when her brother was 13 years old. The accident her brother had becomes a focal point of the story, and ever after the reader will remember that this accident has not yet occurred and that the events being recounted are believed by the participants to have led to the accident. The author also establishes that her protagonist is looking back from some distance and that the story is thus memory, and the way Scout relates her view of Souther history shows that she is always looking at her world in a large context and seeking connections that will teach her lessons and convey a deeper meaning.
The story also concerns the development of this child, but the child is telling her story from a distance so that this development as well has already taken place. Scout tells her won story in her own words, and this takes the reader immediately into the mind of this specific character. We know from the first that this is the way the story will unfold, and in the first chapter the different elements of the household are introduced so we know who belongs to Scout and to whom Scout belongs, what relationships there are in this house, and also the fact that there is a mystery next door. The children are always the ones to throw themselves into dangerous situations or to see dangerous situations where there may be none, and the way they taunt Boo Radley always has the hint of danger along with a sense of mystery.
The story begins in summer when the children are on their own to a great degree, and it then changes to the beginning of the school year. Scout and her brother are in a class with students who are presented as a microcosm of society--some are middle class, some are from wealthier families, some have parents who are well thought-of in the community, while others have parents who drink or otherwise bring disap...