To kill a mocking bird notes

‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ notes

Major themes
Prejudice/discrimination (Racism, social misfits caused by social inequalities)
Against blacks (Tom Robinson), and Boo.
Blacks VS Whites, Blacks VS Whites.
Courage
Atticus taking on Tom’s case
Jem protecting Scout
Boo saving children
Mrs Dubose freeing addiction
Growing up/education
In class
Outside class – Atticus, Calpurnia, personal experiences
Conflict
Good/evil, right/wrong: Perspective
The mockingbird motif
Tom and Boo
‘Sin’ – against conscience, against god; offence against god.

Chapter 1
Both child and adult voice. Narrative voice: child’s point of view, Adult voice: looking back at childhood.
Child’s voice: allow readers to understand and make connections the way Scout does not; Scout, being a child, also does not censor or filter out anything but only reports; she is curious and innocent.
E.g. “Maycomb was an old town… moved slowly then.”  Adult’s recollection.
Background information. Starts with ending, where Jem’s arm is broken.
Dill is only a visitor; no connection to Maycomb (or Maycomb’s adult world).
Boo Radley: Focus of children’s curiosity. Surrounded by superstitions; described bizarrely—“malevolent phantom”, over six feet tall and eats squirrels and cats. Described as a nightmarish villain but eventually is changed into a kind human being.
“The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes”-page 17. This implied that jail was only for Negroes and that the whites could never make a mistake big enough for them to be treated like the Negroes.
Chapter 2-3
Scout’s first day of school. Miss Caroline introduced: Education; fails as it does not meet needs of students.
Scout victimised by Miss Caroline’s inexperience.
Scout’s well-meaning missteps (telling the teacher about Walter’s poverty, criticizing Walter for putting molasses on his meat and vegetables) earn harsh rebukes.
Developing Scout’s nature: Essentially good.
Honest mistakes; evil, injustice, etc. does not disillusion her and Jem.
Walter Cunningham Jr. – Poor. (Social classes)
Atticus encourages Scout to place herself in another person’s position before she judges that person.
Atticus’s moral position of sympathy and understanding is contrasted with rigid, impersonal systems.
Chapter 4-6
Finds gum and Indian heads.
Scout’s childhood adventures with Dill and Jem and the spectre of Boo Radley.
Boo’s character slowly transforms to a human being from a monster even as the children play the “Boo Radley game”, attempt to pass a message to Boo and peek through his shutters.
Boo’s presence first felt. First, the presents, then Miss Maudie’s insight into origins of Boo’s reclusiveness and sympathetic perspetive.
Miss Maudie: shares Atticus’ sense of justice. Principal maternal figure.
“Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch.”- Page 60. People thought that only Negroes would sneak into others’ backyard at night and steal other people’s things.
Chapters 7-8
Jem’s pants were mended: most likely by Boo.
Jem becoming more mature; strong sense of justice. Growing up.
Nathan Radley plugs up hole in tree, Jem cries because he grasps that Nathan Radley had deprived Boo of his connection to the world; broken up Boo’s friendship attempt.
Built snowman: Black on the inside, white on the outside. Even if a man’s skin colour is white, it does not always mean that he’s good, he might be black on the inside.
Unseasonable snow, fire at Miss Maudie’s, appearance of mad dog.
Snow and fire bringing out the best of people.
Atticus’ humbleness: “One-shot Finch”; killing the dog with one shot contrasting with Tom Robinson killed with seventeen shots—Tom suffered a lot more.
Chapters 9-11
Fire in previous chapter: turning point from childhood world to drama of trial.
Tom Robinson: Black man accused of raping white woman.
Atticus defending Tom: angering townspeople. Atticus aims to defend Tom and not just because he was supposed to; he wanted to. Even own family condemns his decision (Aunt Alexandra).
Atticus’ parenting style: focuses on moral values. Tells children to avoid fights.
When he gives Jem and Scout air rifles as presents, he advises them that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. This idea is the source of the novel’s title, and it reflects the book’s preoccupation with injustices inflicted upon innocents. In different ways, Jem and Scout, Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson are all “mockingbirds.”
Mad dog incident: Atticus’ courage and town’s dependence on him for protection from both the dog; and the evil within themselves.
“Courage is not a man… when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what”: True bravery has nothing to do with weapons.
Mrs Dubose incident: Jem is showed what true courage is.
Mrs Dubose representing everything wrong with Maycomb (racism, curses, etc.) yet her darkness is balanced by her bravery and determination.
Camellia: White = Purity; goodness.
Chapters 12-13
Dill’s absence.
Glimpse of black community—visit to black church.
Desperate poverty; unpainted building, cannot afford hymnals, illiterate congregation; yet adversity brought them closer.
Simply because of their racial prejudice, the townspeople are prepared to accept the word of the cruel, ignorant Bob Ewell over that of a decent black man.
Calpurnia: bridge between the two worlds; leads a double life. Changes to “coloured” dialect when with blacks.
Lula did not welcome Jem and Scout when Calpurnia brought them to church because she thought that the whites had their own church and that Jem and scout did not belong there. The Negroes had many misgivings about the whites but they did not dare to express it in public to avoid persecution.
First purchase was used as a gambling den for the whites during weekdays – disregard of the negroes’ worship place, which was supposed to be sacred and religious.
Aunt Alexandra taking over the Finch household; clashing with Calpurnia.
Chapters 14-15
Dill returns, Jem “rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood” by telling Atticus. To Scout: makes Jem a “traitor,” though it is really an act of responsibility that marks Jem’s maturation.
Jem leads Scout and Dill into town on the night that Atticus faces the lynch mob: Jem’s transition from boy to man, as he stands beside Atticus and refuses to “go home,” since only a child would do so.
Refuses his father not petulantly but maturely. Understands the situation and fears for Atticus’ safety.
Confrontation dominated by Scout’s innocence.
Scout’s actions causes Mr Cunningham look from Atticus’ perspective; Atticus, too, had a child. She makes Mr. Cunningham realize her essential goodness, and he responds with civility and kindness. Proves that “a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.” It took a child to remind them that they were still human.
Chapters 16-17
Trial scene/courtroom scene! Most important scene.
Injustice revealed although court case was lost: blacks confined to “coloured balcony”, allowing Bob to prevail without question over the world of a black man.
Children sitting in “coloured section”, Miss Maudie’s refusal to attend trial.
Verdict was a foregone conclusion. Jem does not understand that Atticus’ brilliant efforts will be in vain. Atticus, like Mrs Dubose, is “licked” before he begins.
Threat posed to innocent by evil.
Chapters 18-19
Mayella Ewell: piticable; miserable existence. Lacked kind treatment to the extent that she think Atticus is making fun of her when he calls her Miss Mayella. No friends and Scout seems justified in thinking that she “must have been the loneliest person in the world.”
Victim marred by attempt to become victimiser to cover her own shame.
Tom: hardworking, honest, but made a mistake of feeling sorry for Mayella.
Link Deas: opposite of prejudice. Scrutinises Tom only in respect to individual character.
Mr. Gilmer believes that Tom must be lying, must be violent, and must lust after white women— simply because he is black (Prejudice / stereotypes)
Chapters 20-22
Dolphus Raymond’s appearance. The importance of his character: the nature of his preference for blacks. Raymond never explains precisely why he prefers blacks—he just does; similarly, the white community never explains why it hates blacks—it just does.
Raymond acts on his preferences solely because he wants to live that way, not because he wants to dictate how others should live.
Does not belong inside with the rest of the white people, because he does not share their guilt.
Scout bewildered by the verdict, but, like Atticus, she is resilient and retains her positive view of the world. Jem does not; while the Ewells and the forces of hatred and prejudice do not take his life, they do strip him of his childhood and youthful idealism.
Chapters 23-25
Bob Ewell’s threats. Atticus an honest mistake by failing to understand the depth of Ewell’s anger toward him. Alexandra is more insightful, maintaining that a man like Ewell will do anything to get revenge.
Mr. Underwood likens Tom’s death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” an obvious reference to the novel’s title.
Alexandra and Scout stand together as Finches, as harmless as mockingbirds, forced to bear the white community’s utter disregard of justice.
One shot was enough to injure Tom Robinson, but they shot him 17 times, more than enough to kill a person. Compare this to the one shot that killed the mad dog. It was devastating that the fact that the whites were so prejudiced against the Negroes that they wanted more than killing them.
Roly-poly bug incident: Wishing to withdraw back into the childhood world of actions without abstract significance, Scout moves to crush the bug. Jem, now sensitive to the vulnerability of those who are oppressed, urges her to leave the defenceless bug alone.
Chapters 26-27
They begin with a reference to the Radley Place, the source of childhood terror that no longer scares Jem and Scout—“Boo Radley was the least of our fears,” Scout comments. Reflecting how trial hardened them.
Scout still expresses a wish to see Boo someday, and she remembers fondly the near encounters with Boo during summers past.
Meanwhile, the incident involving Miss Gates reveals the extent to which Jem remains affected by the trial. Despite the grim experience of the trial, Scout retains her faith in the basic goodness of others, and thus her teacher’s obvious hypocrisy confuses her. Jem, meanwhile, has become disillusioned, and when Scout tries to talk to him about Miss Gates, he shuts himself off from the painful memory of the trial.
Chapters 28-31
Night of the pageant filled with elements of foreshadowing, from the sense of foreboding that grips Aunt Alexandra just before Jem and Scout leave the house, to the ominous, pitch-dark night to Cecil Jacobs’s attempt to scare them.
A mood of mounting suspense marks Jem and Scout’s walk home. They hear the noise of their pursuer and assume it to be Cecil Jacobs, only to realize relatively quickly that they are in mortal danger. The attack is all the more terrifying because Jem and Scout are vulnerable: they are very near their home, in an area that they assume to be safe, and Scout, in her awkward costume, has no idea what is happening.
Ewell would never have the courage to attack the best shot in Maycomb County; his insidious, malicious attack on the children reveals how loathsome a man he is.
Scout finally realizes who has saved her and Boo the childhood phantom becomes Boo the human being.
Heck Tate’s decision to spare Boo the horror of publicity by saying that Bob Ewell fell on his knife invokes the title of the book and its central theme one last time, as Scout says that exposing Boo to the public eye would be “sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird.”
Has appropriated not only Atticus’s words but also his outlook, as she suddenly sees the world through Boo’s eyes.