This has to do with Scout's childlike view of cause and effect. Children often ponder how and why things happen in their own special way; it is a way that adults often overlook when caught up in their own problems. The role of Simon Finch and Andrew Jackson serve to give context to Scout's world in the Southern United States. She sees the two as loosely defining an identity that she has had no control over, "If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up to Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? "