The Ignorant Characters of E. Nesbit

The ignorant character is the character who comments on the action without fully understanding it. 

Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird closely observes and comments on the world--while not understanding entirely what she is witnessing. In one of the most gripping scenes of the book/movie, Jem and Scout and Dill surprise Atticus who is sitting vigil outside Tom Robinson's jail cell to stop him being lynched. Atticus is cool and collected until the children arrive. Scout observes the change in behavior without fully understanding that she is observing a suddenly frightened father. 

Scout is ignorant due to age (her age and understanding increase in the book). Other characters, like Watson and Hastings, are ignorant in comparison to Sherlock and Poirot's genius.  

The problem with the ignorant character is that so much naivety or missing-the-point can grate. It is generally excused more with children but even there, as E. Nesbit shows, it can fall a bit flat. 

E. Nesbit wrote a series of connected short stories told by Oswald Bastable (they are told in third-person but ostensibly written by Oswald, who occasionally forgets that he is a character, not the narrator). They are mostly hilarious. But there are a few places where Oswald observes behavior that he supposedly doesn't understand but amuse the adults within the book. 

[Oswald] placed the ungoated end of the rope in the unresisting hand of the fortunate detective [who won the children's lottery]. Neither Oswald nor any of the rest of us has ever been able to make out why everyone should have laughed so. But they did. They said the lottery was the success of the afternoon. And the ladies kept on congratulating Mr. Biggs.

The difference here between Scout and Oswald is that Lee doesn't make a mockery of Scout. Scout is entirely reliable as a narrator. The conclusions for what she has closely observed are left up to the audience. In fact, I use the scene from To Kill a Mockingbird in my literature course to illustrate how fiction is different from non-fiction. The audience is never told why Atticus behaves the way he does. 

Nesbit doesn't tell anyone either--but the "hmmm, now, now, why did that happen, I wonder?" tone is laid on a bit too thick in places. It's not that different from the hilarious jokes-in-passing in Pixar's Toy Story, where they work perfectly, becoming a bit-too-self-conscious in some of Pixar's other movies. 

Nesbit is generally quite remarkable with child characters. The Railway Children possibly captures better than any of her books the day-to-day thoughts and reflections of ordinary kids. The adults who step in to help don't turn the siblings' behavior into punch lines.