“To Kill a Mockingbird” … Chapter Summaries (poached off the web … and decidedly incomplete …)

 

Chapter 1

 

•The story begins with an injury: the narrator’s brother Jem got his arm broken when he was thirteen.

•While the arm is never quite as good as new, it doesn’t interfere with Jem’s mad football skills, so he doesn’t care much.

•Years afterward, brother and narrator argue over where the story really starts: the narrator blames it on the Ewell family, while Jem (the older sibling by four years) puts the beginning at the summer they first met Dill.

•The flash-forward conversation continues: the narrator says that if you want to get technical about it, everything began with Andrew Jackson, whose actions led to their forefather Simon Finch settling where they did.

•The flash-forward becomes a flashback: Simon Finch was a pious and miserly Englishman who left his home country to wander around America, before settling in Alabama with his accumulated wealth, his family, and his slaves.

•Simon’s homestead was called Finch’s Landing, and was a mostly self-sufficient estate run by Simon’s male descendents, selling cotton to buy what the farm couldn’t produce itself.

•The wealth went away with the Civil War, but the tradition of living off the land at Finch’s Landing remained.

•The current generation, however, has bucked the trend: Atticus, the narrator’s father, studied law in Montgomery, while his younger brother went all the way to Boston to become a doctor.

•The only Finch left at the Landing is their sister Alexandra and her quiet, inactive husband.

•After becoming a lawyer, Atticus returned to Maycomb, the county seat of Maycomb County, twenty miles from Finch’s landing.

•Atticus saved his money to put his younger brother through med school.

•Atticus feels at home in Maycomb, not least because he’s related to nearly everyone in the town.

•Out of the flashback, into the present-time of the story (which we already know the narrator’s actually remembering: hop over to “Point of View/Narrative Voice” if you want the 411 on that right now).

•The narrator thinks about the Maycomb s/he (we don’t know which yet) knew: it’s not a happening place. Everyone moves slower than sweat, and there’s not much worth hurrying for, let alone much sense of what might be happening outside the county lines.

•The narrator lives on the town’s main residential drag with her brother Jem, her father Atticus, and their cook Calpurnia, who is a force to be reckoned with.

•You may notice there’s no mom to be found: she died when the narrator was two, and the narrator doesn’t really remember her, though Jem does.

•The story really gets underway the summer when the narrator is five going on six and Jem is nine going on ten.

•This is the summer Dill arrives in Maycomb.

•Their first meeting happens like this: Jem and the narrator are playing in their backyard, hear a noise next door, and go to check it out. The find a small boy, six going on seven but looking younger, who introduces himself as Charles Baker Harris and announces that he can read.

•Charles Baker Harris says that people call him Dill, so we will too.

•Dill tells the narrator and Jem a bit about himself: he’s from Meridian, Mississippi, but he’s spending the summer with his aunt, the young Finches’ next-door neighbor Miss Rachel.

•Unlike the rural Finches, he’s had access to movie theatres, and so he regales them with the story of Dracula.

•The narrator asks Dill about his father, who isn’t dead but also isn’t around. Dill gets a bit embarrassed about the dad question, so Jem tells his sibling to shut up.

•Dill, Jem, and the narrator spend the summer acting out stories from the books they’ve read, over and over and over, until they start to get bored.

•Dill comes to the rescue with a new idea: they can try to make Boo Radley come out.

•The Radley Place is the haunted house of the neighborhood, complete with ghost: Boo Radley, who got in trouble with the law as a teenager and has been holed up in the house unseen ever since. The kids think his family might be keeping him prisoner.

•The house has quite the reputation with the neighborhood kids, who avoid it at all costs.

•The narrator tells us a story about Boo that Jem got from Miss Stephanie Crawford, the neighborhood busybody: that Boo, then 33 years old, had been cutting out newspaper articles for his scrapbook when suddenly he stabbed the scissors into his father’s leg, then calmly went back to what he was doing.

•After that Boo was locked up by the police briefly, and there was talk of sending him to an insane asylum, but he ended up back in the Radley Place.

•Still after that, old Mr. Radley, Boo’s father, died, but he was soon replaced by Boo’s older brother Nathan, and nothing much changed at the Radley Place.

•Rumor has it that Boo gets out at night and stalks around the neighborhood, but none of the kids has ever actually seen him.

•Jem makes up horror stories about what Boo’s like (think a cross between a vampire and a zombie), but Dill still wants to see him.

•Dill dares Jem to go knock on the Radleys’ door.

•Jem tries to get out of it without showing he’s scared, but gives in when Dill says he doesn’t have to knock, just touch the door.

•Jem works up his nerve, dashes up to the house, slaps the door, and runs back at top speed without looking behind him.

•The three children, after getting to safety on their own porch, look at the Radley Place, but all they see is the hint of an inside shutter moving.

 

Chapter 2

 

•The summer ends and Dill heads back home to Meridian.

•The narrator looks forward to joining the kids at school for the first time instead of spying on them through a telescope like a pint-size stalker.

•Jem takes the narrator to school, and explains that it’s different from home – and he doesn’t want his first-grade sibling cramping his fifth-grade style.

•The narrator’s teacher is a young woman by the name of Miss Caroline Fisher, who’s from North Alabama, otherwise known to the native Maycombians as Crazy Land.

•Miss Caroline reads the class a story about cats, and seems blithely unaware that she’s already completely lost her audience, a bunch of farm kids whom the narrator says are “immune to imaginative literature” (2.8).

•Miss Caroline puts the alphabet up on the board, which all of the class already knows (most of them are starting first grade for the second time).

•Miss Caroline asks the narrator to read, and is not pleased that she’s already good at it.

•Miss Caroline assumes, despite the narrator’s disagreement, that Atticus has taught the narrator how to read, and decrees that these lessons must stop because Atticus isn’t a licensed teacher and therefore is doing his child more harm than good.

•The narrator gets the impression that reading, which seems to come as naturally as breathing, is something like a sin when it’s done out of class.

•Trying to stay out of further trouble, the narrator zones out till recess, then complains to Jem.

•Jem says that Miss Caroline is at the center of educational reform in the school, which he calls “the Dewey Decimal System” (2.25).

•This new system results in boring class time, so the narrator starts writing (in cursive) a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline makes the narrator stop, saying that first graders print, and cursive isn’t taught until third grade.

•The narrator remembers that Calpurnia had passed rainy days by giving writing lessons.

•Miss Caroline is halted in her inspection of her students’ lunches by Walter Cunningham, who doesn’t have one.

•She tries to lend him a quarter for lunch, but he refuses to take it.

•The narrator, whose name we now learn is Jean Louise, steps in, explaining to Miss Caroline that Walter is a Cunningham.

•That explanation, crystal clear to Jean Louise, doesn’t mean much to Miss Caroline, so she explains further: the Cunninghams won’t take anything from anybody, preferring to get by on the little they have.

•Flashback: Jean Louise knows about the Cunninghams because Walter’s father hired Atticus to sort out an entailment on his property, and paid for the service by barter rather than in cash.

•Back to the schoolroom present: Jean Louise wants to explain everything properly, but doesn’t have the ability, so she just says that Miss Caroline is making Walter ashamed by trying to lend him money he can’t pay back.

•Miss Caroline cracks at this, and calls Jean Louise up to the front of the class, where she pats her hand with the ruler and makes her stand in the corner.

•The class breaks out laughing when they realize that the ruler taps were supposed to be corporal punishment.

•The bell rings and everyone leaves for lunch, with Miss Caroline collapsing with her head in her hands at her desk.

 

Chapter 3

 

•Jean Louise catches Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard and beats him up for being the reason she got in trouble, but Jem stops her.

•She explains to Jem (who calls her Scout, so we will too) what happened.

•Jem invites Walter to come home for lunch with Scout and him.

•At the Finch house, Atticus talks to Walter about farming problems on equal footing, while Jem and Scout listen half-comprehendingly.

•Walter asks for molasses, which he proceeds to pour all over his food.

•Scout asks him what the heck he’s doing, and he stops in embarrassment.

•Calpurnia calls Scout into the kitchen, where she gives her a lecture on hospitality – Walter’s a guest and so he can do whatever he wants without Scout judging him for having different manners from what she’s used to.

•The kids go back to school, and Scout whiles away the afternoon by hating Calpurnia for having chewed her out.

•She’s called back to the here and now by a shriek from Miss Caroline, who’s seen a “cootie” (3.37) – probably a louse, which may sound more familiar in the plural, lice – on one of the students.

•Miss Caroline tries to send the student, named Burris Ewell, home to wash his hair (after looking up lice remedies in a reference book), and says he should take a bath (which he really needs, since he looks worse than Pigpen from Peanuts) before coming back to class the following day.

•Burris tells her that he’s not coming back.

•Another student explains to the puzzled Miss Caroline that Burris is one of the Ewells, who come the first day to satisfy the truant officer but disappear from school after that.

•Burris decides he’s already done with school for the year even though the first day isn’t over yet, and manages to make Miss Caroline cry before he leaves.

•The other students try to cheer Miss Caroline up, and she reads them another boring story.

•Scout, highly dissatisfied with her first day of school, goes home and makes plans to run away.

•Atticus comes home from work, having apparently forgotten about Scout’s lunchtime misbehavior, and Calpurnia gets back on Scout’s good side with tasty crackling bread.

•After dinner, Atticus invites Scout to come read with him, which reminds her of her run-in over reading with Miss Caroline that morning.

•Scout tries to convince Atticus that she doesn’t really need to go to school, but he’s not buying it.

•She tells him about her first day of school, and Atticus tells her to try to think about things from the other person’s perspective – in this case, Miss Caroline, who was only trying to do her best in a strange place, whose ways she doesn’t yet understand.

•Scout says that Burris Ewell stays home from school so she should be able to do so too, but Atticus says that what holds true for Ewells doesn’t apply to Finches.

•Scout finally is appeased when Atticus proposes a compromise: they’ll keep reading at home if she’ll keep going to school – but she shouldn’t tell Miss Caroline about it.

 

Chapter 4

  

•Scout thinks about all the people around her who seem to be doing just fine without having been taught through her school’s reformed educational techniques.

•Every day Scout runs by the Radley Place to get home after school.

•One day she notices something, and works up the nerve to go back and look at it.

•A tree at the edge of the Radley yard has some tinfoil stuck to a knothole, and inside the hole Scout finds two pieces of chewing gum.

•She takes it home, and, after some testing to try to make sure it’s not poisoned, she chews it, and does not immediately keel over and die.

•When Jem comes home (he doesn’t get out of school till half an hour after Scout), he tells her to spit it out; when he finds out where she got the gum, he makes her gargle too.

•Finally, the last day of school comes, and the Finch kids look forward to the summer and the return of Dill.

•On their way home, they find another piece of tinfoil in the same knothole, and behind it a jewelry box, decorated with more tinfoil, containing two Indian-head pennies.

•Jem and Scout discuss the ethics of keeping their find: chewing gum is one thing, but money is something else entirely in their code of conduct.

•Soon Dill arrives, full of stories of his journey that may or may not be true – including news of his father.

•They talk about starting to play-act something, but already they’re bored of everything they know.

•Dill says he can smell death, and tells Scout that her end is nigh.

•She tells him to shut up, and Jem mocks both of them for being (or pretending to be) superstitious.

•He talks about Hot Steams, who are ghosts who wander the earth because they can’t get to heaven, but Scout tells Dill not to believe him, which makes Jem mad.

•Scout suggests they play with a tire – sitting inside and being rolled around.

•Scout goes first, not realizing Jem’s still angry at her, and he sends the tire-cramped Scout flying down the sidewalk.

•The tire bumps to a stop, and a dazed Scout extricates herself, only to realize that she’s in the Radleys’ front yard.

•As soon as she’s able to find her feet she runs back to the boys, leaving Jem to pass the Radley gate once more to retrieve the tire she left behind.

•Calpurnia brings the kids lemonade, and Jem comes up with a new game: acting out the life and times of Boo Radley.

•The game starts out simple, but gets more and more complex as the summer goes on.

•One day Atticus walks up as they’re performing the scissor-stabbing scene, and seems suspicious of their behavior, but doesn’t explicitly forbid them from doing it.

•Scout still has qualms about going on with the game, especially since she’s pretty sure that when she got dumped out of the tire she heard someone laughing inside the Radley house.

 

Chapter 5

 

•Scout convinces Jem to back off on the Radley game.

•Dill asks Scout to marry him, but then spends all his time hanging out with Jem, even though Scout tries to get his attention by beating him up, twice.

•Neglected by the boys, Scout spends her time hanging out with Miss Maudie Atkinson.

•Miss Maudie has a “tacit treaty” with the kids that she won’t bother them if they don’t bother her, so Scout’s spending time with her is a first.

•A devoted gardener, Miss Maudie cultivates her yard with a passion.

•Miss Maudie makes the best cakes in the neighborhood, and best of all, shares them with the three kids.

•Scout asks Miss Maudie if she thinks Boo Radley is still alive, and Miss Maudie says she hasn’t seen his coffin carried out yet, so he probably is.

•Flashback: Scout’s Uncle Jack has a history of flirting with Miss Maudie, though in a joking way.

•Back to the present: Miss Maudie tells Scout more about the Radleys, including that old Mr. Radley (Boo’s father) was a “foot-washing Baptist” (5.27), which is apparently much more hardcore than just regular Baptists.

•In fact, some of Mr. Radley’s fellow foot-washers have told Miss Maudie that she and her flowers are going to burn in hell, because any time spent not reading the Bible is time spent in sin, especially if it involves creating something pleasing to the senses. (No word on whether criticizing one’s neighbor’s counts as a sin with them.)

•Miss Maudie says that the Radleys are “so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one” (5.44), which accounts for some of their strangeness.

•Scout asks if Boo is crazy, and Miss Maudie says that if he wasn’t when this whole thing started, he probably is now after being locked up for so long.

•Miss Maudie sends Scout home with some poundcake.

•Scout finally breaks into Jem and Dill’s boys-only club, and finds out what they’ve been planning to do: try to put a note to Boo through one of the upper windows of the Radley Place using a fishing pole.

•Dill’s going to be lookout with a bell to ring if anyone comes.

•Scout and Dill get into an argument as to whether all the stories Dill has told about his father are true.

•They put the plan into action, but Jem has some difficulty maneuvering the fishing pole, which is too short to reach the window.

•Scout hears Dill ringing the bell and turns around, expecting to see a slavering Boo Radley; instead, she sees Atticus, who is not pleased.

•Atticus tells the kids to stop bothering Boo, who has a perfect right to stay in his house if he wants to.

•Atticus also tells them to stop playing their stupid game, and Jem says they weren’t making fun of Boo, inadvertently revealing to Atticus that they were in fact playing at being the Radleys.

•Jem eventually realizes he’s been done in by the oldest lawyer’s trick in the book.

 

Chapter 6

  

•Jem and Scout get permission from their father to go hang out with Dill at his aunt’s fish pond, since Dill’s leaving the next day.

•Scout suggests they watch for Mr. Avery, a neighbor who had previously astonished them by peeing in an impressive arc off his front porch.

•Dill suggests they go for a walk instead, and Scout, knowing that no one in Maycomb just goes for a walk, smells a rat.

•Jem says they’re just going to go to the streetlight by the Radley Place.

•Once they get there Dill and Jem say they just want to peek in the window.

•Scout doesn’t like this at all, but stops complaining when they accuse her of being a girl about it.

•The trio go under the wire fence at the back of the Radley Place and, after dealing with swishy collard greens, a squeaky gate, and clucking chickens, make it up to the house.

•Jem and Scout raise Dill up so he can look through the window, but he can’t see much except curtains.

•Jem makes it onto the porch and looks through another window, when Scout sees a shadow – a man’s shadow, moving across the porch towards Jem.

•The shadow goes up to Jem, raises his arm, drops it again, and then leaves.

•The kids, throwing caution to the winds, dash back the way they came.

•Scout trips as she hears a loud noise – someone’s shooting at them.

•They dive under the fence, Jem leaving his pants behind when they get stuck on the wire.

•The kids make it home and see a bunch of neighbors gathered in front of the Radley Place.

•Realizing their absence will be noticed, they join the group.

•Miss Maudie tells them that Mr. Radley has been shooting at a “Negro” (6.60) in his yard.

•Suddenly everyone notices that Jem doesn’t have any pants on.

•Dill tries to save the day by saying they were playing strip poker.

•Playing with cards apparently being more of a sin in Maycomb than stripping, Jem says that they were playing with matches.

•Atticus tells Jem to get his pants back, and Dill goes home, bidding his friends farewell.

•Scout goes to bed, but is terrified that every sound she hears might be Boo Radley coming to wreak his revenge.

•Jem gets up, telling Scout he’s going back to get his pants.

•Scout threatens to wake Atticus, arguing that a beating isn’t as bad as getting shot, but Jem refuses to back down.

•Scout sits outside on the porch, listening for the dreaded shotgun blast and waiting for Jem to return.

•Finally Jem returns – with his pants – and the two go back to bed.

 

Chapter 7

 

•After his adventures at the Radley Place, Jem is in a bad mood for a week, and Scout doesn’t get it, but leaves him alone.

•Scout starts second grade, whose only improvement over first grade is that she now gets out of school at the same time as Jem.

•Jem finally breaks his silence and tells Scout what happened when he went back to the Radley House: his pants weren’t where he had left them, but were folded up on top of the fence, and the tear in them had been sloppily mended. Jem is thoroughly creeped out by this.

•Passing by the knothole tree, they see a ball of twine resting inside it.

•Scout wants to take it, but Jem thinks it might be someone’s hiding spot and they should leave it alone.

•When the twine is still there after a few days, Jem takes it, and from then on there are no more qualms about taking things found in the knothole.

•A few months later, the knothole holds their best find yet: two figures carved out of soap that bear a striking resemblance to Scout and Jem.

•Scout throws them on the ground, thinking about voodoo dolls, but Jem rescues them.

•They try to figure out who might have made them, but can’t think of anyone with both the skill and the desire to do so.

•The knothole haul in the following weeks just keeps getting better and better: a whole pack of chewing gum, a spelling bee medal, and a broken pocket watch (which Jem tries but fails to fix).

•Scout and Jem decide to write a letter to their secret benefactor.

•The next day, however, they find that the knothole has been filled with cement.

•Jem stakes out Mr. Nathan and finally catches him to ask if he was the cement-pourer.

•Mr. Nathan says that the tree’s sick and the cement is an attempt to cure it.

•Later Jem asks Atticus about the tree, and Atticus says it looks healthy to him, but Mr. Radley should know his own trees.

•Jem stands on the porch till it gets dark, and Scout stays with him.

•When they finally go inside, Scout thinks Jem looks like he’d been crying, though she hadn’t heard a thing.

 

Chapter 8

 

•Maycomb gets a season it hadn’t seen in a while: winter.

•Mr. Avery tells the kids that bad children makes the seasons change, causing them to feel guilty.

•Mrs. Radley dies, but no one really notices, since they hardly saw her even when she was alive.

•Atticus goes to pay his condolences at the Radleys, and when he comes back Jem and Scout pounce on him to ask if he saw Boo in the flesh (he didn’t).

•Scout is terrified when she wakes up one morning and sees white stuff pouring from the sky. Turns out it’s snowing.

•School is cancelled, so Jem and Scout set out to make a snowman, though they don’t really know how and there isn’t much snow.

•The kids head over to Miss Maudie’s to take her snow, running into Mr. Avery on the way, who reminds them that their sins are responsible for the unusual weather.

•Jem has a plan to make do with the minimal snowfall: he makes the snowman’s guts out of mud, then coats the outside in a skin of snow so it looks like a real snowman.

•They add enough accessories to make their snowman instantly recognizable as a caricature of Mr. Avery, until Atticus makes them change it.

•That night, it’s freezing.

•Atticus wakes Scout in the middle of the night because Miss Maudie’s house – next door to the Finches’ – is on fire.

•Atticus says they don’t need to start taking their furniture out of the house yet, and that Jem should take Scout and go stand in front of the Radley Place, safe from the flames.

•Scout watches the men of the town trying to fight the fire and save some of Miss Maudie’s belongings (Atticus carries out her most prized possession, a rocking chair), but it’s a lost cause.

•Jem and Scout endure the intense cold and keep a close eye on Atticus: as long as he’s not worried, they don’t need to be either.

•Once the fire is finally put out (and Miss Maudie’s house reduced to a smoking hole in the ground), the Finches return to their fortunately undamaged home.

•Atticus notices what Scout has so far failed to – that she’s wrapped in a blanket that she didn’t have when she left the house.

•Scout says that she stayed right where he told her to, in front of the Radley Place, but she and Jem saw Mr. Nathan fighting the fire, so if he wasn’t the stealthy blanket-deliverer, it must have been some other occupant of that house. Hmm, who could that be?

•Jem tells Atticus all about the knothole and the cement and his mended pants.

•Atticus finally says outright that it must have been Boo Radley who brought the blanket, and Scout, who’s been late for the clue train, is hit by belated terror to know that he was so close to her but she didn’t even realize it.

•The next day, Jem and Scout stay home from school, and see Miss Maudie in her charred backyard.

•Miss Maudie, however, is a glass-half-full kind of person, and tells them that now she can rebuild her house the way she wants it. She’s more worried about the trouble she’s caused to neighborhood, and plans to smooth everything over with cake – except Miss Stephanie, who’s putting her up till she gets her own place, can’t have the recipe.

 

Chapter 9

 

•Scout is ready to fight Cecil Jacobs on the schoolyard when he says that her father defends “niggers” (9.3). (This is the word the book uses, so we’ll use it here, despite its history of offensiveness. See the “Speech and Dialogue” section in “Tools of Characterization” for a fuller explanation of how this term functions in the book.)

•Scout asks Jem about it, who tells her to ask Atticus.

•Later Scout does so, and Atticus tells her not to say “nigger.”

•Scout then asks him if all lawyers defend Negroes, and he says that of course they do.

•Next Scout asks why if all lawyers do it Cecil made it sound worse than bootlegging (booze, not music), and Atticus explains the case.

•Atticus’s client is a man named Tom Robinson, and he tries to explain to Scout the complexities of race relations in Maycomb.

•Atticus says that some people think he shouldn’t be working hard at defending Tom Robinson, but for him it basically boils down to self-respect: he couldn’t hold his head up if he caved to public opinion and did less than his best in the man’s defense.

•Atticus asks Scout not to get in fights at school over the case, no matter what anyone says to her.

•Scout asks if they’re going to win the case, and Atticus says no, but they have to try anyway.

•Atticus reassures Scout: “But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re [the residents of Maycomb are] still our friends and this is still our home” (9.27).

•The next day at school, Scout is about to fight Cecil Jacobs, but remembers what Atticus told her and walks away instead, even though she gets called a coward.

•Soon it’s Christmas, which means a visit from Uncle Jack (good), but also a visit to Aunt Alexandra (bad).

•Even worse, it means having to spend time with Aunt Alexandra’s grandson Francis, who is the yin to Scout’s yang.

•Uncle Jack arrives with two long packages of mysterious contents.

•Scout cusses while Uncle Jack’s around, and later he tells her that she shouldn’t do that if she wants to grow up to be a lady (which she doesn’t).

•The next day is Christmas morning, and they open the mysterious packages to find a pair of long-desired air rifles. (All together now: you’ll shoot your eye out! Thanks, A Christmas Story.)

•Uncle Jack tells Atticus that he (Atticus) will have to teach them how to shoot, but Atticus says that that’s his (Uncle Jack’s) job.

•They head down to Finch’s Landing, sans air rifles (to Scout’s dismay, as she’d already had fantasies about shooting Francis).

•Old Simon Finch had given Finch Landing an interesting layout: the only way to get to his daughters’ room is by a staircase that leads into their parents’ bedroom, meaning no sneaking out at night for the girls.

•Jem abandons his sister to schmooze with the adults, leaving Scout to deal with the dreaded Francis.

•They talk about their Christmas presents, and Francis is happy with his, though they are pretty much the boringest gifts you can think of.

•Scout thinks about Aunt Alexandra, who has strong ideas as to what girls should be that are very different from what Scout is (girls should wear frilly dresses instead of overalls, for example).

•It’s dinnertime, and Scout alone is relegated to the kid’s table.

•Despite the seating arrangement, Scout is happy to chow down on Aunt Alexandra’s good eats.

•When all the adults (and Jem) are well into their food coma, Scout heads out to the backyard, joined by Francis.

•Scout brings up Dill, and defends him when Francis parrots his elders in putting him down.

•Francis then quotes Aunt Alexandra in calling Atticus a “nigger-lover” who’s “ruinin’ the family” (9.98).

•Scout holds her peace, lulling Francis into carelessness, and then pounces, beating him up good.

•Uncle Jack pulls Scout off Francis, and tells her she’s in trouble, though he seems to care less about her punching her cousin than her swearing while she’s doing it (as Francis helpfully tells their uncle, she called him a “whore-lady” [9.125]).

•Scout, Jem, Atticus, and Uncle Jack return to Maycomb, and Scout retreats to her room alone.

•Uncle Jack comes in to talk to Scout, who tells him he wasn’t fair – he should have listened to both sides of the story, like Atticus always does, before passing judgment.

•Uncle Jack asks Scout to explain her side of the story, and she tells him what Francis had said to set her off.

•Uncle Jack wants to head right back to Finch’s Landing to tell off Francis, but Scout stops him, saying that she doesn’t want Atticus to know that she was fighting over someone insulting him after he told her not to.

•Scout asks Uncle Jack (who’s a doctor) to bandage her still-bleeding hand.

•While he’s doing that she asks him what a whore-lady is, but his answer doesn’t tell her much.

•Later Scout overhears Uncle Jack and Atticus talking about her conversation with her uncle.

•Scout waits for Uncle Jack to break his promise and tell Atticus why she was fighting, but he doesn’t.

•Atticus tells Uncle Jack some things about children: you should answer them truthfully and simply when they ask you questions, and bad language is less dangerous than hotheadedness.

•Atticus says that Scout needs to learn to control her temper because things are only going to get harder, but at least she’s trying, and she does all right when she follows Jem’s example.

•Uncle Jack asks Atticus how bad things are going to get, and Atticus tells him “it couldn’t be worse” (9.182) – the whole case is based on he-said-she-said.

•Atticus says that he’s just going to try to get the jury to think a little, and then have a better chance to win the case on appeal.

•He also says that he’d rather not have taken the case, but once it was offered to him he couldn’t refuse it in good conscience.

•Atticus hopes he can get his kids through the case without their “catching Maycomb’s usual disease” – going “stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up” (9.187) – and that they will come to him if they have questions.

•Atticus then tells Scout, still lurking around the corner eavesdropping, to go to bed, and many years later an older Scout realizes that her father meant her to overhear the conversation.

 

Chapter 10

 

 •Jem and Scout think their father is really old and can’t do anything interesting, or even play football, like the other kids’ fathers do.

•Even though he’s really boring (they think), he still manages to give them trouble through his insistence on defending Tom Robinson, which their peers are gossiping about.

•It doesn’t help that word has gotten around after Scout walked away from Cecil Jacobs that she wouldn’t fight anymore, though she makes an exception for family members like Francis Hancock – they’re fair game.

•Atticus refuses to teach Scout and Jem how to shoot their shiny new air rifles, so Uncle Jack gives them a shooting lesson.

•Atticus tells Jem that if he must shoot at birds, he should aim for the bluejays, but “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (10.7).

•Scout talks to Miss Maudie about how their neighborhood is all old people, and Miss Maudie (while bristling at being called old), acknowledges that there aren’t any 20- or 30-somethings around to give Scout role models of young adulthood.

•Scout complains that Atticus can’t do much of everything, and Miss Maudie tries to defend Atticus (he’s a checkers grand master! he can play the Jew’s Harp!), but Scout is not impressed.

•Scout goes home and builds a barricade from which to aim at Miss Maudie’s butt across the street; Atticus finds her, and gets that it’s a joke, but tells her not to aim at people anyway.

•Scout asks Calpurnia about her father’s talents, and the cook is convinced that he has them, but draws a blank when asked to provide specifics.

•Jem is depressed when his father refuses to join in on the town’s Methodists vs. Baptists football game and he has to stand on the sideline watching Cecil Jacobs’s father making touchdowns for the opposing side (the Baptists).

•One day Jem and Scout go off exploring to see if they find any of the local wildlife to kill with their air rifles when they see Tim Johnson, a dog who belongs to Mr. Harry Johnson.

•The dog’s acting kind of strange, so they run home to tell Calpurnia.

•Calpurnia at first tells them to deal with it themselves, but when she sees the dog for herself she dashes for the phone to tell Atticus that there’s a mad dog on the loose.

•Then she talks to Miss Eula May, the town telephone operator, to tell her to let everyone else on the street know that they should stay out of the way of the rabid animal.

•The Radleys don’t have a phone, so Calpurnia runs over to their place, bangs on their front door, and when no one answers, shouts, “Mad dog’s comin’!” (10.72).

•As Calpurnia sprints back to the Finch house, Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate, the sheriff, arrive.

•The street is eerily quiet and empty, as its residents watch the dog’s approach silently from their windows.

•The dog finally gets within range of Heck Tate’s rifle, but he wants Atticus to make the shot, because if he misses the bullet will hit the Radley Place, and Mr. Tate knows he can’t shoot that well.

•Atticus says he hasn’t shot a gun in thirty years, but reluctantly takes the weapon when Mr. Tate thrusts it on him.

•Jem and Scout watch as their father walks out to the middle of the street, takes aim, fires, and kills the dog.

•The neighborhood residents slowly emerge from their houses now that the danger has passed, and Miss Maudie calls Atticus “One-Shot Finch” (10.122).

•Jem is shocked at his father’s display of skill.

•Miss Maudie tells Jem and Scout that far from being the helpless old man they thought he was, Atticus “was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time” and his nickname was “Ol’ One-Shot” (10.137).

•Scout and Jem wonder why they’ve never heard their father talk about his shooting skill, let alone actually use it.

•Miss Maudie tells them that Atticus feels that his marksmanship is a God-given talent that gives him an unfair advantage over other living creatures, and that he shouldn’t use it unless he has to.

•The dog’s body is taken away by a man named Zeebo.

•Scout wants to brag to everyone at school about her father’s shooting skill, but Jem tells her not to, because he thinks Atticus wouldn’t want her to, since he’s never mentioned it before.

•Jem says that he wouldn’t care if Atticus couldn’t do anything, because, as he says, “Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!” (10.152).

 

Chapter 11

 

•Now that Scout’s a grown-up second-grader, tormenting Boo Radley seems like little kid stuff, and she’s setting her sights beyond the neighborhood to the metropolis of downtown Maycomb.

•Getting downtown, however, requires getting past the house of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, which is no walk in the park.

•Jem and Scout both hate the old woman, who hurls insults at them every time they pass her house, no matter how nice they are to her.

•Since Jem has made it a point of pride to get past Mrs. Dubose on the way to meeting Atticus when he gets off of work in the evenings, Atticus often finds them upset at her rantings.

•Atticus always stops and makes polite conversation with Mrs. Dubose, which makes Scout think he’s incredibly brave.

•The day after Jem turns twelve he’s got a load of birthday cash to spend, so they head down to town for him to lighten his pockets.

•On the list of purchases: a toy steam engine for Jem and a baton for Scout.

•As they pass Mrs. Dubose, she accuses them of playing hooky, even though it’s Saturday.

•Jem and Scout hold firm while Mrs. Dubose abuses them, but when she attacks their father for defending Tom Robinson, Jem almost loses it and has to be dragged away by Scout.

•They make their purchases and head home, passing by Mrs. Dubose’s house again.

•She’s not on the front porch, and Jem suddenly snaps, grabs Scout’s new baton, and uses it to destroy Mrs. Dubose’s camellias, finally breaking the baton over his knee.

•They don’t go to meet their father that evening, and Scout tries to cheer Jem up, but it’s no use.

•Atticus comes home and asks Jem about what he did.

•He tells his son that no matter what she said, wreaking havoc upon an old lady’s garden is not justifiable, and he should go over and talk to her – right now.

•Atticus stops Scout from joining her brother, so she sits there wondering why Atticus doesn’t seem as worried as she is that the gun-toting Mrs. Dubose will make Jem pay for her camellias in blood.

•Scout finally climbs up on her father’s lap and speaks her mind, and her father says that it’s not fair, but they need to keep their heads, for things are only going to get worse as the Tom Robinson case gets closer.

•Atticus tells Scout that he hopes that when they’re older they’ll understand better why he’s doing what he’s doing.

•Scout tells Atticus he must be wrong, because most of the townspeople think he is.

•Atticus says that they’re entitled to their opinions, but personal conscience isn’t a democracy.

•Jem returns, saying that he cleaned up Mrs. Dubose’s yard and apologized, even though he didn’t mean it.

•Atticus says that there’s no point in apologizing unless it’s sincere, and that as a sick old lady Mrs. Dubose can’t be held responsible for her actions.

•Jem says that Mrs. Dubose wants him to come over every day except Sunday to read to her, and Atticus says he has to do it.

•Jem says that “it’s all dark and creepy” (11.67) inside the house, and Atticus says he should just pretend he’s in the Radley Place.

•On Monday Jem heads over to Mrs. Dubose’s house for his first round of reading, and Scout goes with him.

•They find her in bed, and she gets in a few sharp words before Jem starts reading.

•Scout finds her face disgusting – wrinkled, spotty, toothless, and drooling – and tries to find something else to look at.

•After Jem has been reading for a while, the kids notice that Mrs. Dubose’s frequent corrections of his mistakes had dropped off, and she doesn’t even notice when he stops mid-sentence.

•They look at her and, thinking she is in some sort of fit, ask if she’s all right, but she doesn’t answer.

•Then an alarm clock goes off, and Mrs. Dubose’s servant Jessie shoos them out of the house, saying it’s time for Mrs. Dubose’s medicine.

•They get home at 3:45 and play in the backyard for the rest of the afternoon.

•Atticus comes home bearing gifts, and asks them about their first day at Mrs. Dubose’s.

•The days go on for Jem and Scout, and reading to Mrs. Dubose becomes part of their daily schedule.

•One evening Scout asks Atticus what exactly a “nigger-lover” (11.100) is, since that’s what Mrs. Dubose frequently calls him, and it’s also what Francis said.

•Atticus asks if that’s the reason she jumped Francis, and Scout says yes.

•Atticus asks why she’s asking if she understood it well enough to make it the reason for a fight, and Scout says that it was the way Francis said it that got on her nerves.

•Atticus tells her that the term doesn’t mean anything, but it’s something “ignorant, trashy people use […] when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves” (11.107) and that even higher-class people use it sometimes when they want to put someone down.

•When Scout asks, Atticus says that they call him this because he tries to love everyone. He tells her it’s not an insult to the person it’s directed at, but instead shows you how “poor” (11.109) the person using it is.

•One afternoon while Jem is plugging away at reading aloud to Mrs. Dubose, Atticus surprises them by coming in.

•It turns out he’s just left work – Mrs. Dubose has been setting the alarm clock later and later each day, so Jem and Scout have been staying longer and longer without realizing it.

•Mrs. Dubose says that Jem has to come for a week longer, even though the original month is up, and Atticus says he has to do it.

•During the final week of reading, there’s no more alarm clock, but Mrs. Dubose tells them when they can go – and it’s usually pretty late when she says so.

•She no longer has fits, but when the book gets boring she amuses herself by picking on the kids – fortunately, Jem’s gotten better at not rising to her bait.

•Finally the last day of reading is over, and Jem and Scout are both ecstatic to be free.

•As spring goes on, Jem develops a mastery of what’s going on in college football.

•One evening Atticus gets a phone call, and says he’s going over to Mrs. Dubose’s.

•He comes back with a box, and says that Mrs. Dubose is dead.

•He explains to the kids what’s really been going on: Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, and she decided she wanted to kick the habit before she died as a matter of personal pride.

•The fits the kids saw her have were caused by withdrawal, and the reading was to keep her mind off the cravings till the alarm clock went off and she could have a dose (which also explains why the reading periods got longer and longer).

•By the end of the reading afternoons, she was free of the drug habit.

•The box Atticus brought home is for Jem, and when he opens it he finds a camellia.

•Jem is angry at this needling from beyond the grave, but Atticus tells him that he thinks it’s a message that everything’s all right.

•Atticus says that even if Jem hadn’t gone on an anti-camellia rampage, Atticus might have made his son go read to Mrs. Dubose anyway, in order “to see what real courage is” (11.153) – not using a gun but fighting for a cause you believe in even if you know you probably won’t win.

Chapter 12

•Jem’s hit the middle school years, and everyone knows what that means: he’s angsty, moody, prone to prolonged silences broken by angry outbursts, and thinks Scout should act like a girl.

•Scout asks Atticus and Calpurnia what’s up with Jem and whether she can fix it by beating him up, but they say he’s just growing up and she should leave him alone.

•Scout decides to hang out with Calpurnia till Dill arrives in Maycomb for the summer, but she gets a letter that Dill’s spending some quality time boat-building with his dad, and he’s not coming to Maycomb.

•Scout misses Dill horribly – it’s not summer without him.

•To make things worse, Atticus (who’s a member of the state legislature) gets called into a special session and is away for two weeks.

•With Atticus away, Calpurnia doesn’t trust Jem and Scout to go to church by themselves (there was a past incident involving tying up one of their Sunday School classmates in the furnace room), and decides to take them with her to her church instead.

•On Saturday night, Cal scrubs Scout down to her bare skin, and even looks in on an embarrassed Jem’s bath.

•Calpurnia also makes sure that there’s not a thread out of place on the kids’ clothes.

•When Jem asks her why she’s being so obsessive about their appearances, she says “I don’t want anybody sayin’ I don’t look after my children” (12.31).

•On Sunday, they head over to First Purchase African M.E. Church outside of town.

•When the Finch kids arrive with Calpurnia, all the men and women already there greet them with respect.

•All, that is, except one – a tall woman named Lula who asks Calpurnia why she’s brought white children to the African-American church.

•Jem and Scout feel that they’re not wanted, but the crowd, which for a moment seems menacing, drives off Lula and one says that they’re glad to have the Finches at their church.

•They enter the church building, which seems plain and ill-equipped compared to their regular church.

•Calpurnia insists on giving Jem and Scout a dime each for the collection, which allows them to keep the dimes Atticus had left them for that purpose.

•Scout asks where the hymn-books are, and Cal says they don’t have any, but hushes Scout before she can ask any more questions.

•The priest, Reverend Sykes, begins the service by welcoming the Finches, and then reads some announcements.

•One of the announcements is that the day’s collection will go to Helen, Tom Robinson’s wife.

•Zeebo leads the congregation in a hymn by reading out each line of the lyrics, which everyone else sings after him, surprising both Scout and Jem, who had never heard of such a thing before.

•Reverend Sykes gives a sermon, which like that of the Finches’ usual preacher, focuses on “the Impurity of Women” (12.79).

•Contrary to the Finches’ usual church experience, the Reverend names names as to who’s been sinning lately, and tells them individually to cut it out.

•After the collection, Jem and Scout are again surprised when Reverend Sykes counts the collection money in front of everyone and then announces they don’t have enough – they need at least ten dollars to get Helen and her family through the week.

•The Reverend goes so far as to lock the doors and hold the congregation hostage until they cough up enough cash.

•Jem and Scout put in their dimes from Atticus.

•Once the ten dollars is finally collected, the doors are opened and the service is over.

•Jem and Scout chat with Reverend Sykes, and Scout tries to restrain her curiosity, but can’t help asking questions.

•Scout asks the Reverend why Helen’s having difficulty finding work, but Calpurnia interrupts before he has a chance to answer.

•Scout asks Calpurnia the same questions, and she says that because of what people say that Tom’s done, his family is being shunned.

•Scout presses Calpurnia to tell her what Tom did, and Cal reluctantly tells her that Bob Ewell has accused him of raping Ewell’s daughter.

•Scout remembers the Ewells’ reputation and wonders why anyone would listen to them, and then asks Calpurnia what rape is, but Cal says she should ask Atticus.

•Jem asks why the congregation sings their hymns the way they do, instead of saving up for hymn-books.

•Cal says that hymn-books wouldn’t do them much good – hardly any people in the church can read.

•Cal’s one of the few literate ones, as Miss Maudie’s aunt, Miss Buford, taught her to read.

•Jem and Scout ask Cal questions about herself, and learn that she’s older than Atticus though she doesn’t know her age exactly, or even her birthday – she just celebrates it on Christmas to make it easy to remember.

•Cal grew up near Finches’ Landing, and moved to Maycomb with Atticus when he married.

•Cal taught Zeebo to read as well, and we find out that Zeebo is her eldest son.

•To teach her son she used the Bible and a book Miss Buford used to teach her – Blackstone’s Commentaries, a gift from the Finch kids’ grandfather.

•Jem’s shocked that she’s learned and taught English out of such a difficult book as the Commentaries, and says that that must be why she doesn’t talk like the other African-Americans he knows.

•Scout thinks with wonder that Calpurnia has a whole other life besides being their cook, much like a child realizing that teachers don’t sleep at school.

•Jem asks why Cal talked differently at the African-American church than she does with white people, and she says that it makes more sense to fit in.

•Scout asks if she can visit Calpurnia at her home some time, and Cal says yes.

•They arrive home to find Aunt Alexandra installed on their front porch.

 

Chapter 13

•Scout asks Aunt Alexandra if she’s come for a visit, and aunty says that she and Atticus have decided that it’s best if she stays with them for a while, as Scout needs some “feminine influence” (13.10).

•Scout does not agree with this, but keeps quiet about it.

•In fact, Scout has trouble making any kind of conversation with her aunt.

•That evening Atticus comes home and confirms Aunt Alexandra’s reason for her coming to stay, though Scout thinks it’s mostly her aunt’s doing, part of her long campaign to do “What Is Best For The Family” (13.22).

•Aunt Alexandra is popular in Maycomb and takes a leading role in the feminine social circles, even though she makes obvious her belief that Finches are superior to everyone else (even though, as Jem says, most people in town are related to the Finches anyhow).

•Aunt Alexandra is a firm believer in Streaks – each family has one (a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, etc.), though Scout doesn’t really understand her aunt’s obsession with heredity.

•The history of the town, however, suggests that Aunt Alexandra’s not totally crazy: its location far away from the river that forms the area’s main transportation route means that hardly anyone ever moves to Maycomb or away from it. Because of this, families have known each other for generations, establishing the reputations which Aunt Alexandra refers to as “streaks.”

•Scout mostly ignores her aunt, but occasionally gets called in to make an appearance at a luncheon or tea.

•At one such event Scout fails to recognize a woman as her cousin, prompting her aunt to try to instill some family pride into the Finch children.

•Her first attempt is to show them a book their cousin Joshua wrote, but they already know his story from Atticus: he went crazy at college and tried to assassinate the president of the school.

•After this Aunt Alexandra sends Atticus to talk to the kids about being proud of their superior heritage, but he just scares them because he doesn’t usually talk to them in that way.

•Scout ends up crying on his lap, and Atticus tells them both to forget it.