Spatial Narrative; Moral Geography; Embodied Ethics; Racialized Space; Narrative Space
Abstract
This research examines To Kill a Mockingbird through a spatial literary studies perspective and looks at how walking, waiting, and the positioning of space operate as narrative techniques that signify moral confrontation and complicity. Theories by Lefebvre, Tally, and Hones have been incorporated that treat space as representational background and ethical infrastructure where the argument considers Atticus Finch's pacing, Scout's stillness, and Boo Radley's re-emergence as situated, spatially loaded acts. Through close readings of three spaces with a variety of spatial intensity including the scene of the standoff at the jail, the trial at the courthouse, and Boo Radley's return, the analysis shows how space can collect visibility, power, and the potential for silence in ways that speech cannot. Maycomb does not appear as an inscribed Southern town but as a moral geography where every gesture and threshold signifies moral complicity or resistance. The research offers a humanistic and theoretical approach that reconsiders space as the ethical relation in narrative within To Kill a Mockingbird.