In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is the young narrator. Since she is only eight years old she will be learning a lot of things very quickly in the novel. One of the themes that her father is trying to teach her is empathy. She doesn't quite understand what the difference between the right thing and accepted thing is yet and Atticus wants to make sure that she learns it. Since Scout is in her early years of childhood still, empathy is a likely thing that she would be learning about. She is also unreliable somewhat as a narrator because she doesn't understand the world as much as most of the other characters in the novel. Scout being the narrator affects the theme of empathy by making it easier to believe she is learning about it, being able to explain the things that are needed to learn about empathy and understanding just enough to be able to learn about it.?Since Scout is so young it is easy to believe that she would be learning the theme of empathy.
             Most parents want to teach their children what is right and wrong and how to know the difference while they are at a young age, so Atticus trying to teach this lesson to Scout is very believable. This also makes the lesson easy to learn for the reader because the novel is first person which means that the lesson will be explained in the book as if it was being taught to someone who had never been introduced to it ever before in their life. Scout asks a lot of questions, being a child, and wants to learn a lot of things. Atticus explains real courage to her and Jem in a very good way that gets the point across. "'It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do'" (149). Atticus is able to explain things very straight-forward without sounding unrealistic. The lessons can be taught in a simple way because they are being taught to children. "'...