Significance of Dewey Decimal System With To Kill a Mockingbird In the book To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee describes a southern community in the south during the 1930s. The great detail that is given the characters is rendered through the reflective eyes of a child named Scout. She describes the people and their place in the community in great detail. Each person has his or her niche in the community. This can be compared to the Dewey Decimal System of classifying books in a library where every book has its logical place, but is an integral part of the library community. In Maycomb each person has their place and each affect one another