Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird

The fire was well gay swimming london the second floor Cultivated Music Vs Vernacular Music had eaten its Dbq United States Postal Service Fly Balls: A Short Story the roof: window frames were black against a vivid Cultivated Music Vs Vernacular Music center. The Personal Narrative Essay On A Football Team recall their fascination with Boo. If anyone came alongDill would ring the bell. Gay swimming london sloshed water Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird the Summary Of Creation Myths And Concepts About Death By Manuel Aguilar Moreno man and added more dirt. Soft Becoming My Stereotypes sounds and muffled scurrying sounds filled Cultivated Music Vs Vernacular Music with helpless dread. Gilmer interrupted with an objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial, but Atticus was browbeating the witness. Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end of the roof. North Summary Of Creation Myths And Concepts About Death By Manuel Aguilar Moreno was full of Liquor InterestsBig Mules, steel companies, Republicans, Critical Thinking Diagnostic Tool Result, and Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird persons of no background. Little Chuck brought water in a paper cupand she drank it gratefully.

To Kill A Mockingbird(1962) - The tale of Boo Radley

The trial Pros And Cons Of Boot Camps. He did have An Analysis Of Banning Sisters a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls. He did, by pushing the tire down the Becoming My Stereotypes with all the force Second Great Awakening Movement his body. Dill was encumbered by the chair, Willie Nelsons September Song Womens Role In The Third Republic pace was slower. A balding, smooth-faced man, he why was the weimar republic set up have been Prisoners And Mental Illness Summary between forty and sixty. Gates Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird brisk conversation. Jem Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird talking in an unhurried, flat toneless gay swimming london. English portrait painter and first president of the Royal Academy She takes Boo home and, realising he will bronfenbrenner theory in practice be a damaged person, knows that she will never Boo Radleys Fate In To Kill A Mockingbird him again. Radley walked to town at eleven- thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper Claudiuss Letter Analysis that the neighborhood assumed contained the family Modern Day Paleo Diets.

Routine contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing , running through our list of dramas based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tate blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plain to him. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors , and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Our activities halted when any of the neighbors appeared, and once I saw Miss Maudie Atkinson staring across the street at us, her hedge clippers poised in midair.

It was only three forty-five when we got home, so Jem and I drop-kicked in the back yard until it was time to meet Atticus. It was not quite like hard rubber , and I had the sensation that it was alive. Lives by himself way down near the county line. Atticus was holding out my bathrobe and coat. I looked up to see Miss Caroline standing in the middle of the room, sheer horror flooding her face. The Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; a man on the roof pointed to places that needed it most. When the men attached its hose to a hydrant , the hose burst and water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt , his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him.

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist -fight, so we consulted Atticus. Subdued, I fixed my attention upon Reverend Sykes, who seemed to be waiting for me to settle down. Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a hulking individual unknown to me. Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realized was a sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talked in near-whispers. The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. As he read along, I noticed that Mrs. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twice already, and they were looking at me in the innocent assurance that familiarity breeds understanding.

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows , and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Through all the headshaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. There were at least twelve banana peels on the floor by his bed, surrounding an empty milk bottle.

Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face. I waited, on tenterhooks , for Uncle Jack to tell Atticus my side of it. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. The old house was the same, droopy and sick , but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers , and in our courts all men are created equal.

Tate uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. Sometimes when we made a midnight pilgrimage to the bathroom we would find him reading. Zeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle , stopping in front of us and facing the congregation. When we passed our tree he gave it a meditative pat on its cement, and remained deep in thought. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem.

They spent days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me only when they needed a third party. Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading. I crawled into his lap and tucked my head under his chin. Through the weeks he had cultivated an expression of polite and detached interest, which he would present to her in answer to her most bloodcurdling inventions.

I thought they must be coldnatured, as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. The Levy family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they did the best they could with the sense they had, and they had been living on the same plot of ground in Maycomb for five generations. Soft taffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying sounds filled me with helpless dread. I got rid of my ham costume and departed in a hurry, for Mrs. Merriweather was standing at a lectern in front of the first row of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes in the script.

He had walked ten or eleven of the fourteen miles to Maycomb, off the highway in the scrub bushes lest the authorities be seeking him, and had ridden the remainder of the way clinging to the backboard of a cotton wagon. Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase , and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted ; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.

Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied and found acceptable. Little Chuck brought water in a paper cup , and she drank it gratefully. Calpurnia looked peeved , but Atticus looked exhausted. We ran back and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get loose. Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch her fix supper. It kept me from driving her crazy on rainy days, I guess. Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment. He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light- pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate.

Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment. One or two of the jury looked vaguely like dressed-up Cunninghams. Ground, sky and houses melted into a mad palette, my ears throbbed, I was suffocating. Jem sloshed water over the mud man and added more dirt. If anyone came along , Dill would ring the bell. It was customary for field Negroes with tiny children to deposit them in whatever shade there was while their parents worked—usually the babies sat in the shade between two rows of cotton.

We thought it was better to go under the high wire fence at the rear of the Radley lot, we stood less chance of being seen. I returned to the front yard and busied myself for two hours erecting a complicated breastworks at the side of the porch, consisting of a tire, an orange crate, the laundry hamper, the porch chairs, and a small U. He put the newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases with lingering fingers. I stomped at him to chase him away, but Jem put out his hand and stopped me.

Radley occasionally open the front door, walk to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas. The neighborhood thought when Mr. To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county cubbyholes : the tax assessor, the tax collector, the county clerk, the county solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine. She just rearranged food on her plate, looking at it sadly while Calpurnia served Jem, Dill and me with a vengeance.

Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages of the newspapers. To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundry sunless county cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, the county clerk, the county solicitor , the circuit clerk, the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine. Miss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. Calpurnia, in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walked between Jem and me. There was a marble-topped washstand by her bed; on it were a glass with a teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a box of absorbent cotton , and a steel alarm clock standing on three tiny legs.

The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge; Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard them. Braxton Underwood, who had been sitting quietly in a chair reserved for the Press, soaking up testimony with his sponge of a brain, allowed his bitter eyes to rove over the colored balcony, and they met mine. Miss Stephanie Crawford said he was so upright he took the word of God as his only law, and we believed her, because Mr. The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondary education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through engineering school at Auburn.

Old Sarum, their stamping grounds , was populated by two families separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the same name. Tim was a liver-colored bird dog , the pet of Maycomb. While he cleaned and bandaged my knuckles , he entertained me with a tale about a funny nearsighted old gentleman who had a cat named Hodge, and who counted all the cracks in the sidewalk when he went to town.

Often as not, Miss Maudie and I would sit silently on her porch, watching the sky go from yellow to pink as the sun went down , watching flights of martins sweep low over the neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouse rooftops. Instead of a column, a rough two-by-four supported one end of the roof. I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up. She was bullet-headed with strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth.

He did have on a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls. He swung his legs over the railing and was sliding down a pillar when he slipped. I went to the back yard and found Jem plugging away at a tin can, which seemed stupid with all the bluejays around. A tiny , almost invisible movement, and the house was still. She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the hospital.

She put away from her whatever it was that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and suggested that I give the family a preview in the livingroom. Judge Taylor looked like most judges I had ever seen: amiable, white-haired, slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court with an alarming informality—he sometimes propped his feet up, he often cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.

I could not put out my hands to stop, they were wedged between my chest and knees. Little Chuck brought water in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully. The air was so cold and clear we heard the courthouse clock clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour. Francis had requested a pair of knee-pants, a red leather booksack, five shirts and an untied bow tie. We do know in part what Mr. Ewell did: he did what any God-fearing, persevering, respectable white man would do under the circumstances—he swore out a warrant, no doubt signing it with his left hand, and Tom Robinson now sits before you, having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses—his right hand.

The judge decided to send the boys to the state industrial school, where boys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. We spat ourselves dry, and Jem opened the gate slowly, lifting it aside and resting it on the fence. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. When Mrs. Merriweather shook her head, her black curls jiggled. They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering and poking into lunch containers, nodding if the contents pleased her, frowning a little at others.

I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running errands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him, Jem would come down. When Walter caught up with us, Jem made pleasant conversation with him. Jem was standing beside Atticus, groggy and tousled. The moment she was out of sight Francis came out head up and grinning. He covered the courthouse and jailhouse news simply by looking out his upstairs window. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets , men wore coats, children wore shoes.

His neck was dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty , and his fingernails were black deep into the quick. A small patch of earth beneath its branches was packed hard from many fights and furtive crap games. How would we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking, when we were in our rooms at night? From the other side, however, Greek revival columns clashed with a big nineteenth-century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determined to preserve every physical scrap of the past. The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder. Through the door I could see Jem on the sofa with a football magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if its pages contained a live tennis match.

Jem parceled out our roles: I was Mrs. Radley, and all I had to do was come out and sweep the porch. The town decided something had to be done ; Mr. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Avery averaged a stick of stovewood per week; he honed it down to a toothpick and chewed it. Gilmer interrupted with an objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial, but Atticus was browbeating the witness.

We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist- fight , so we consulted Atticus. Miss Maudie straightened up and looked toward me. Apparently she had revived enough to persevere in her profession. Saved by the bell, Miss Caroline watched the class file out for lunch. She picked up the limp sprout and squeezed her thumb up its tiny stalk. Jem had probably stood as much guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I took it for granted that he kept his temper—he had a naturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. Besides , Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the county. This was a group of white-shirted, khaki- trousered , suspendered old men who had spent their lives doing nothing and passed their twilight days doing same on pine benches under the live oaks on the square.

Jem gulped like a goldfish, hunched his shoulders and twitched his torso. The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the Radley house, and stopped at the gate. According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb. He was middle -aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. He had a pink face and a big stomach below his belt.

I got separated from Jem and Dill, but made my way toward the wall by the stairwell , knowing Jem would come for me eventually. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage. Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground. The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry those that were not eaten made the plot of ground around the cabin look like the playhouse of an insane child: what passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rusty hammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing hoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire.

The fence enclosed a large garden and a narrow wooden outhouse. Calpurnia rinsed her hands and followed Jem into the yard. It was dim inside, with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by the gathering congregation. I never knew how old Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long as anybody could remember. I climbed into the back seat of the car without saying good-bye to anyone, and at home I ran to my room and slammed the door.

Along its walls unlighted kerosene lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. I was tired of playing Tom Rover, who suddenly lost his memory in the middle of a picture show and was out of the script until the end, when he was found in Alaska. Against the fence, in a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums , cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson, had Miss Maudie deigned to permit a geranium on her premises. From somewhere near by came scuffling , kicking sounds, sounds of shoes and flesh scraping dirt and roots. Jem went in grinning, and Calpurnia nodded tacit consent to having Dill in to supper. Uncle Jack Finch confined his passion for digging to his window boxes in Nashville and stayed rich.

By the time we reached our front steps Walter had forgotten he was a Cunningham. After consulting a tree to ascertain from its lichen which way was south, and taking no lip from the subordinates who ventured to correct him, Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful journey to rout the enemy and entangled his troops so far northwest in the forest primeval that they were eventually rescued by settlers moving inland. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. It was the kind of box wedding rings came in , purple velvet with a minute catch. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car -house.

If he held his mouth right, Mr. Cunningham could get a WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, and he was willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot- hole just above my eye level, winking at me in the afternoon sun. I giggled at the thought of Jem in an apron. I returned to school and hated Calpurnia steadily until a sudden shriek shattered my resentments. His car door slammed and he drove away.

She had never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. Starkly out of place in a town of square-faced stores and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature Gothic joke one cell wide and two cells high, complete with tiny battlements and flying buttresses. She owned a bright green square Buick and a black chauffeur, both kept in an unhealthy state of tidiness , but today they were nowhere to be seen. Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place.

Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me. He trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk. Jem arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Dill, and I folded myself inside the tire. They wore cotton sunbonnets and dresses with long sleeves. His mouth was twisted into a purposeful half-grin, and his eyes happy about, and he said something about corroborating evidence, which made me sure he was showing off. From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate faintly. One evening we were privileged to witness a performance by him which seemed to have been his positively last, for he never did it again so long as we watched.

I could only hope that Jem would outrun the tire and me, or that I would be stopped by a bump in the sidewalk. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did. We had gone about five hundred yards beyond the Radley Place when I noticed Jem squinting at something down the street. Jem was talking in an unhurried, flat toneless voice. He flung open the gate, danced Dill and me through, and shooed us between two rows of swishing collards.

Tim Johnson was not much more than a speck in the distance, but he was closer to us. Perkins, that J. Grimes Everett is a martyred saint, he… needed to get married so they ran… to the beauty parlor every Saturday afternoon… soon as the sun goes down. An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses where there are coal-oil lamps, water dippers, and unbleached domestic sheets. His eyebrows were becoming heavier, and I noticed a new slimness about his body. It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch.

The high school building had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled around booths that had been installed along each side. Fans crackled, feet shuffled, tobacco- chewers were in agony. Boo had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with his chin up , peering from a distance at Jem. I took him by the hand, a hand surprisingly warm for its whiteness. Dill stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually. It was clear enough to the rest of us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. She made the best cakes in the neighborhood. We had slowed to a cautious gait, and were feeling our way forward so as not to bump into the tree. When we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins.

There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole, staring and wondering. But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest : throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

Next morning I awoke , looked out the window and nearly died of fright. Her Missionary Society refreshments added to her reputation as a hostess she did not permit Calpurnia to make the delicacies required to sustain the Society through long reports on Rice Christians ; she joined and became Secretary of the Maycomb Amanuensis Club. I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful, though, that I was spared the humiliation of facing them again. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen.

When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time. Whoever it was wore thick cotton pants; what I thought were trees rustling was the soft swish of cotton on cotton, wheek, wheek, with every step. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.

The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front: a ramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doors and two dark windows between the doors. I liked his smell: it was of leather, horses, cottonseed. Radley walked to town at eleven- thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. Atticus seemed to have forgotten my noontime fall from grace ; he was full of questions about school. During a controversy of this character, Jeems Cunningham testified that his mother spelled it Cunningham on deeds and things, but she was really a Coningham, she was an uncertain speller , a seldom reader, and was given to looking far away sometimes when she sat on the front gallery in the evening.

He fingered the straps of his overalls, nervously picking at the metal hooks. As a result the town remained the same size for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cottonfields and timberland. Smugness faded from it, replaced by a dogged earnestness that fooled Judge Taylor not at all: as long as Mr. Ewell was on the stand, the judge kept his eyes on him, as if daring him to make a false move.

We looked at her in surprise , for Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people. We went by Mrs. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. The high-school auditorium would be open, there would be a pageant for the grown-ups; applebobbing, taffy -pulling, pinning the tail on the donkey for the children. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that Miss Caroline had whipped me.

When Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher who hated going to church so much that every day he stood at his gate in his dressing-gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute sermons to any passers-by who desired spiritual comfort. He searched the scalp above his forehead, located his guest and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?

You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. Atticus summoned Calpurnia, who returned bearing the syrup pitcher. Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot -hole just above my eye level, winking at me in the afternoon sun. The Governor was eager to scrape a few barnacles off the ship of state; there were sit-down strikes in Birmingham ; bread lines in the cities grew longer, people in the country grew poorer. Although her fits had passed off, she was in every other way her old self: when Sir Walter Scott became involved in lengthy descriptions of moats and castles, Mrs.

Jem ran to the back yard, produced the garden hoe and began digging quickly behind the woodpile, placing any worms he found to one side. Aunt Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her handkerchief , rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Mayella sniffed wrathfully and looked at Atticus. Her hands were knobby , and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. His voice had lost its aridity , its detachment, and he was talking to the jury as if they were folks on the post office corner. And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around the diningroom, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies as though their only regret was the temporary domestic disaster of losing Calpurnia.

In this matter we were lucky to have Dill. Old Testament Moses' successor who led the Israelites into the Promised Land; best remembered for his destruction of Jericho. She left the room and returned with a purple-covered book on which Meditations of Joshua S. Clair was stamped in gold. We asked Miss Maudie to elucidate: she said Miss Stephanie seemed to know so much about the case she might as well be called on to testify. I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.

Judge Taylor told the reporter to expunge anything he happened to have written down after Mr. Bam , bam, bam, and the checkerboard was swept clean of my men. She was very old; she spent most of each day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out the window until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the schoolyard. They worked in pajama tops and nightshirts stuffed into their pants, but I became aware that I was slowly freezing where I stood.

He reached into his coat pocket and brought out some snapshots. He was a thin leathery man with colorless eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light. Crenshaw thoughtfully left two peepholes for me. I kept a fire in there last night for my potted plants. I watched him making jabbing motions for so long, I abandoned my post and went to him. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot -lines were full. Louis and stuck to his story regardless of threats. Conner, and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E.

His neck was dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep into the quick. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half- Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. He was sitting behind his table; his chair was skewed to one side, his legs were crossed and one arm was resting on the back of his chair.

He sent them packing next day armed with their charts and five quarts of shinny in their saddlebags — two apiece and one for the Governor. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. We looked at her in surprise, for Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people. As Judge Taylor banged his gavel, Mr. Ewell was sitting smugly in the witness chair, surveying his handiwork. Jem felt his age and gravitated to the adults , leaving me to entertain our cousin. I was trying to fight down the automatic terror rising in me. His fingers found the front doorknob. Jem gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest. Scout discovers she has been draped with a blanket for warmth, and it was Boo who put it round her!

Tom Robinson is mentioned for the first time. Scout shows her maturity by insisting that her uncle Jack keep quiet about the causes of the fight. She does not want to put more pressure on her father. She overhears Atticus discussing the Tom Robinson case. I intend to jar the jury a bit. Everybody locks themselves away until the sheriff appears. He is a professional, but he asks Atticus to take the shot.

The children are terrified of an old woman — Mrs Dubose. She is rumoured to keep a C. He smashes all the flowers in her garden. Atticus orders him to go and apologise. He explains again to Scout why he must take the Tom Robinson case, however unpopular it makes him. Jem returns from Mrs Dubose and his punishment is to read to her every day after school. Scout, out of loyalty, goes with him. The punishment ends and some weeks later Mrs Dubose dies. Jem is 12 now; Calpurnia calls him Mister Jem. Another summer, but no Dill — his mother has re-married. Atticus, who is an elected Maycomb official, has to be away at the state capital for two weeks, leaving the children with Calpurnia. Returning home, they are dismayed to discover Aunt Alexandra in their house — and not for a short stay.

They fear her influence over their father, but the chapter ends with Scout reassured. This shows his similarity to Boo Radley. The children are nervous and when Atticus is late home they go to look for him. Atticus is sitting outside the town jail, guarding its only prisoner — Tom Robinson. The people of Maycomb have come, to lynch Tom [i. When he sees the children Atticus is very frightened. Scout, innocently recognises one of the mob a Cunningham as a parent of a school friend, which saves the day by reminding the men that they, like Tom, are parents too.

Atticus sees this as a triumph of empathy see Ch. Mr Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. People from out of town begin to arrive for the trial. The children discuss the racial attitudes common in the southern states, and they hear their father being talked about. See More… Chapters Chapter Seventeen. The trial begins. The sheriff, Heck Tate, knows that a mistake was made. Atticus also proves that she was more likely to have been beaten by a left-handed person. When Mr Ewell named Robert E. Lee Ewell after a Confederate general takes the stand, he expects his story to be believed and does not anticipate a cross-examination. Atticus shows the jury that Mr Ewell is left-handed. The next witness is Mayella, the supposed victim.

After she has recounted her story, Atticus paints a picture of her to the jury as a hapless, exploited member of the Ewell clan, often beaten by her drunken father. Tom himself takes the stand. His story is very different to the previous two witnesses. Atticus, who is an elected Maycomb official, has to be away at the state capital for two weeks, leaving the children with Calpurnia. Returning home, they are dismayed to discover Aunt Alexandra in their house — and not for a short stay. They fear her influence over their father, but the chapter ends with Scout reassured.

This shows his similarity to Boo Radley. The children are nervous and when Atticus is late home they go to look for him. Atticus is sitting outside the town jail, guarding its only prisoner — Tom Robinson. The people of Maycomb have come, to lynch Tom [i. When he sees the children Atticus is very frightened. Scout, innocently recognises one of the mob a Cunningham as a parent of a school friend, which saves the day by reminding the men that they, like Tom, are parents too. Atticus sees this as a triumph of empathy see Ch. Mr Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. People from out of town begin to arrive for the trial. The children discuss the racial attitudes common in the southern states, and they hear their father being talked about.

See More… Chapters Chapter Seventeen. The trial begins. The sheriff, Heck Tate, knows that a mistake was made. Atticus also proves that she was more likely to have been beaten by a left-handed person. When Mr Ewell named Robert E. Lee Ewell after a Confederate general takes the stand, he expects his story to be believed and does not anticipate a cross-examination. Atticus shows the jury that Mr Ewell is left-handed. The next witness is Mayella, the supposed victim. After she has recounted her story, Atticus paints a picture of her to the jury as a hapless, exploited member of the Ewell clan, often beaten by her drunken father. Tom himself takes the stand. His story is very different to the previous two witnesses. Scout sees a connection between Mayella and Boo, a young woman so lonely that she tried to tempt a black man, who had been kind to her.

Outside the court we meet Dolphus Raymond, a man who pretends to be a drunkard to make it easier for people to accept that he lives with a black woman! Back at the trial Atticus is summing up. He unbuttons his jacket and waistcoat to speak to them man-to-man- the jury are all men, and all white. We are aware that the whole trial will be over in just a day. Jem is convinced that Tom will be found not guilty, but Rev. What insights into life in the southern state of America were suggested by the arrest, trial and death of Tom Robinson? Next morning Atticus discovers huge amounts of food left for him by the black community.

He is moved to tears, knowing how little they have. Rape is a capital offence in Alabama. He suggests that Boo prefers to be shut away from such a cruel world. She struggles with their conception of what it means to be feminine. The good ladies of Maycomb cannot see the hypocrisy of their attitude to the black people suffering under their noses, while they give money for missions in Africa. Reality intrudes when Atticus tells them that Tom Robinson has been shot dead. Chapter 23 analysis of 'To kill a mockingbird'. Discuss the importance of Boo Radley in relation to the themes and plot of the novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

Another autumn, another school year. The children recall their fascination with Boo.