To Kill A Mockingbird Chapters
Summary, Questions and answers. 100%
Accurate.
Chapter 1 - ✔✔-The story is narrated by a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, who is almost always
called by her nickname, Scout. Scout
...
To Kill A Mockingbird Chapters
Summary, Questions and answers. 100%
Accurate.
Chapter 1 - ✔✔-The story is narrated by a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, who is almost always
called by her nickname, Scout. Scout starts to explain the circumstances that led to the broken arm that
her older brother, Jem, sustained many years earlier; she begins by recounting her family history. The
first of her ancestors to come to America was a fur-trader and apothecary named Simon Finch, who fled
England to escape religious persecution and established a successful farm on the banks of the Alabama
River. The farm, called Finch's Landing, supported the family for many years. The first Finches to make a
living away from the farm were Scout's father, Atticus Finch, who became a lawyer in the nearby town
of Maycomb, and his brother, Jack Finch, who went to medical school in Boston. Their sister, Alexandra
Finch, stayed to run the Landing.
A successful lawyer, Atticus makes a solid living in Maycomb, a tired, poor, old town in the grips of the
Great Depression. He lives with Jem and Scout on Maycomb's main residential street. Their cook, an old
black woman named Calpurnia, helps to raise the children and keep the house. Atticus's wife died when
Scout was two, so she does not remember her mother well. But Jem, four years older than Scout, has
memories of their mother that sometimes make him unhappy.
In the summer of 1933, when Jem is nearly ten and Scout almost six, a peculiar boy named Charles
Baker Harris moves in next door. The boy, who calls himself Dill, stays for the summer with his aunt,
Miss Rachel Haverford, who owns the house next to the Finches'. Dill doesn't like to discuss his father's
absence from his life, but he is otherwise a talkative and extremely intelligent boy who quickly becomes
the Finch children's chief playmate. All summer, the three act out various stories that they have read.
When they grow bored of this activity, Dill suggests that they attempt to lure Boo Radley, a mysterious
neighbor, out of his house.
Arthur "Boo" Radley lives in the run-down Radley Place, and no one has seen him outside it in years.
Scout recounts how, as a boy, Boo got in trouble with the law, and his father imprisoned him in the
house as punishment. He was not heard from until fifteen years later when he stabbed his father with a
pair of scissors. Although people suggested that Boo was crazy, old Mr. Radley refused to have his son
committed to an asylum. When the old man died, Boo's brother, Nathan, came to live in the house with
Boo. Nevertheless, Boo continued to stay inside.
Dill is fascinated by Boo and tries to convince the Finch children to help him lure this phantom of
Maycomb outside. Eventually, he dares Jem to run over and touch the house. Jem does so, sprinting
back hastily; there is no sign of movement at the Radley Place, although Scout thinks that she sees a
shutter move slightly, as if someone was peeking out.
Chapter 2 - ✔✔-September arrives, and Dill leaves Maycomb to return to the town of Meridian. Scout,
meanwhile, prepares to go to school for the first time, an event that she has been eagerly anticipating.
Once she is finally at school, however, she finds that her teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher, deals poorly with
children. When Miss Caroline concludes that Atticus must have taught Scout to read, she becomes very
displeased and makes Scout feel guilty for being educated. At recess, Scout complains to Jem, but Jem
says that Miss Caroline is just trying out a new method of teaching.
Miss Caroline and Scout get along badly in the afternoon as well. Walter Cunningham, a boy in Scout's
class, has not brought a lunch. Miss Caroline offers him a quarter to buy lunch, telling him that he can
pay her back tomorrow. Walter's family is large and poor—so poor that they pay Atticus with hickory
nuts, turnip greens, or other goods when they need legal help—and Walter will never be able to pay the
teacher back or bring a lunch to school. When Scout attempts to explain these circumstances, however,
Miss Caroline fails to understand and grows so frustrated that she slaps Scout's hand with a ruler.
Chapter 3 - ✔✔-At lunch, Scout rubs Walter's nose in the dirt for getting her in trouble, but Jem
intervenes and invites Walter to lunch (in the novel, as in certain regions of the country, the midday
meal is called "dinner"). At the Finch house, Walter and Atticus discuss farm conditions "like two men,"
and Walter puts molasses all over his meat and vegetables, to Scout's horror. When she criticizes
Walter, however, Calpurnia calls her into the kitchen to scold her and slaps her as she returns to the
dining room, telling her to be a better hostess. Back at school, Miss Caroline becomes terrified when a
tiny bug, or "cootie," crawls out of a boy's hair. The boy is Burris Ewell, a member of the Ewell clan,
which is even poorer and less respectable than the Cunningham clan. In fact, Burris only comes to school
the first day of every school year, making a token appearance to avoid trouble with the law. He leaves
the classroom, making enough vicious remarks to cause the teacher to cry.
At home, Atticus follows Scout outside to ask her if something is wrong, to which she responds that she
is not feeling well. She tells him that she does not think she will go to school anymore and suggests that
he could teach her himself. Atticus replies that the law demands that she go to school, but he promises
to keep reading to her, as long as she does not tell her teacher about it.
You never really understand a person until you . . . climb into his skin and walk around in it.
Chapter 4 - ✔✔-The rest of the school year passes grimly for Scout, who endures a curriculum that
moves too slowly and leaves her constantly frustrated in class. After school one day, she passes the
Radley Place and sees some tinfoil sticking out of a knothole in one of the Radleys' oak trees. Scout
reaches into the knothole and discovers two pieces of chewing gum. She chews both pieces and tells
Jem about it. He panics and makes her spit it out. On the last day of school, however, they find two old
"Indian-head" pennies hidden in the same knothole where Scout found the gum and decide to keep
them.
Summer comes at last, school ends, and Dill returns to Maycomb. He, Scout, and Jem begin their games
again. One of the first things they do is roll one another inside an old tire. On Scout's turn, she rolls in
front of the Radley steps, and Jem and Scout panic. However, this incident gives Jem the idea for their
next game: they will play "Boo Radley." As the summer passes, their game becomes more complicated,
until they are acting out an entire Radley family melodrama. Eventually, however, Atticus catches them
and asks if their game has anything to do with the Radleys. Jem lies, and Atticus goes back into the
house. The kids wonder if it's safe to play their game anymore.
Chapter 5 - ✔✔-Jem and Dill grow closer, and Scout begins to feel left out of their friendship. As a result,
she starts spending much of her time with one of their neighbors: Miss Maudie Atkinson, a widow with a
talent for gardening and cake baking who was a childhood friend of Atticus's brother, Jack. She tells
Scout that Boo Radley is still alive and it is her theory Boo is the victim of a harsh father (now deceased),
a "foot-washing" Baptist who believed that most people are going to hell. Miss Maudie adds that Boo
was always polite and friendly as a child. She says that most of the rumors about him are false, but that
if he wasn't crazy as a boy, he probably is by now.
Meanwhile, Jem and Dill plan to give a note to Boo inviting him out to get ice cream with them. They try
to stick the note in a window of the Radley Place with a fishing pole, but Atticus catches them and
orders them to "stop tormenting that man" with either notes or the "Boo Radley" game.
Chapter 6 - ✔✔-Jem and Dill obey Atticus until Dill's last day in Maycomb, when he and Jem plan to
sneak over to the Radley Place and peek in through a loose shutter. Scout accompanies them, and they
creep around the house, peering in through various windows. Suddenly, they see the shadow of a man
with a hat on and flee, hearing a shotgun go off behind them. They escape under the fence by the
schoolyard, but Jem's pants get caught on the fence, and he has to kick them off in order to free himself.
The children return home, where they encounter a collection of neighborhood adults, including Atticus,
Miss Maudie, and Miss Stephanie Crawford, the neighborhood gossip. Miss Maudie informs them that
Mr. Nathan Radley shot at "a Negro" in his yard. Miss Stephanie adds that Mr. Radley is waiting outside
with his gun so he can shoot at the next sound he hears. When Atticus asks Jem where his pants are, Dill
interjects that he won Jem's pants in a game of strip poker. Alarmed, Atticus asks them if they were
playing cards. Jem responds that they were just playing with matches. Late that night, Jem sneaks out to
the Radley Place, and retrieves his pants.
Chapter 7 - ✔✔-A few days later, after school has begun for the year, Jem tells Scout that he found the
pants mysteriously mended and hung neatly over the fence. When they come home from school that
day, they find another present hidden in the knothole: a ball of gray twine. They leave it there for a few
days, but no one takes it, so they claim it for their own.
Unsurprisingly, Scout is as unhappy in second grade as she was in first, but Jem promises her that school
gets better the farther along one goes. Late that fall, another present appears in the knothole—two
figures carved in soap to resemble Scout and Jem. The figures are followed in turn by chewing gum, a
spelling bee medal, and an old pocket watch. The next day, Jem and Scout find that the knothole has
been filled with cement. When Jem asks Mr. Radley (Nathan Radley, Boo's brother) about the knothole
the following day, Mr. Radley replies that he plugged the knothole because the tree is dying.
Chapter 8 - ✔✔-For the first time in years, Maycomb endures a real winter. There is even light snowfall,
an event rare enough for school to be closed. Jem and Scout haul as much snow as they could from Miss
Maudie's yard to their own. Since there is not enough snow to make a real snowman, they build a small
figure out of dirt and cover it with snow. They make it look like Mr. Avery, an unpleasant man who lives
down the street. The figure's likeness to Mr. Avery is so strong that Atticus demands that they disguise
it. Jem places Miss Maudie's sunhat on its head and sticks her hedge clippers in its hands, much to her
chagrin.
That night, Atticus wakes Scout and helps her put on her bathrobe and coat and goes outside with her
and Jem. Miss Maudie's house is on fire. The neighbors help her save her furniture, and the fire truck
arrives in time to stop the fire from spreading to other houses, but Miss Maudie's house burns to the
ground. In the confusion, someone drapes a blanket over Scout. When Atticus later asks her about it,
she has no idea who put it over her. Jem realizes that Boo Radley put it on her, and he reveals the whole
story of the knothole, the presents, and the mended pants to Atticus. Atticus tells them to keep it to
themselves, and Scout, realizing that Boo was just behind her, nearly throws up.
Despite having lost her house, Miss Maudie is cheerful the next day. She tells the children how much she
hated her old home and that she is already planning to build a smaller house and plant a larger garden.
She says that she wishes she had been there when Boo put the blanket on Scout to catch him in the act.
Chapter 9 - ✔✔-At school, Scout nearly starts a fight with a classmate named Cecil Jacobs after Cecil
declares that "Scout Finch's daddy defends ******s." Atticus has been asked to defend Tom Robinson, a
black man accused of raping a white woman. It is a case he cannot hope to win, but he tells Scout that
he must argue it to uphold his sense of justice and self-respect.
At Christmastime, Atticus's brother, Jack, comes to stay with Atticus for a week during the holidays.
Scout generally gets along well with Uncle Jack, but when he arrives in Maycomb, she begins cursing in
front of him (a habit that she has recently picked up). After supper, Jack has Scout sit on his lap and he
warns her not to curse in his presence. On Christmas Day, Atticus takes his children and Jack to Finch's
Landing, a rambling old house in the country where Atticus's sister, Alexandra, and her husband live.
There, Scout endures Francis, Alexandra's grandson, who had been dropped off at Finch's Landing for
the holiday. Scout thinks Francis is the most "boring" child she has ever met. She also has to put up with
the prim and proper Alexandra, who insists that Scout dress like a lady instead of wearing pants.
One night, Francis tells Scout that Dill is a runt and then calls Atticus a "******-lover." Scout curses him
and beats him up. Francis tells Alexandra and Uncle Jack that Scout hit him, and Uncle Jack spanks her
without hearing her side of the story. After they return to Maycomb, Scout tells Jack what Francis said
and Jack becomes furious. Scout makes him promise not to tell Atticus, however, because Atticus had
asked her not to fight anyone over what is said about him. Jack promises and keeps his word. Later,
Scout overhears Atticus telling Jack that Tom Robinson is innocent but doomed, since it's inconceivable
that an all-white jury would ever acquit him.
Chapter 10 - ✔✔-"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their
hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
Atticus, Scout says, is somewhat older than most of the other fathers in Maycomb. His relatively
advanced age often embarrasses his children—he wears glasses and reads, for instance, instead of
hunting and fishing like the other men in town. One day, however, a mad dog appears, wandering down
the main street toward the Finches' house. Calpurnia calls Atticus, who returns home with Heck Tate,
the sheriff of Maycomb. Heck brings a rifle and asks Atticus to shoot the animal. To Jem and Scout's
amazement, Atticus does so, hitting the dog with his first shot despite his considerable distance from
the dog. Later, Miss Maudie tells Jem and Scout that, as a young man, Atticus was the best shot in the
county—"One-shot Finch." Scout is eager to brag about this, but Jem tells her to keep it a secret,
because if Atticus wanted them to know, he would have told them.
Chapter 11 - ✔✔-On the way to the business district in Maycomb is the house of Mrs. Dubose, a
cantankerous old lady who always shouts at Jem and Scout as they pass by. Atticus warns Jem to be a
gentleman to her, because she is old and sick, but one day she tells the children that Atticus is not any
better than the "******s and trash he works for," and Jem loses his temper. Jem takes a baton from
Scout and destroys all of Mrs. Dubose's camellia bushes. As punishment, Jem must go to her house
every day for a month and read to her. Scout accompanies him and they endure Mrs. Dubose's abuse
and peculiar fits, which occur at the end of every reading session. Each session is longer than the one
before. Mrs. Dubose dies a little more than a month after Jem's punishment ends. Atticus reveals to Jem
that she was addicted to morphine and that the reading was part of her successful effort to combat this
addiction. Atticus gives Jem a box that Mrs. Dubose had given her maid for Jem; in it lies a single white
camellia.
Chapter 12 - ✔✔-By this time, Jem has reached the age of twelve, and he begins to demand that Scout
"stop pestering him" and act more like a girl. Scout becomes upset and looks forward desperately to
Dill's arrival in the summer. To Scout's disappointment, however, Dill does not come to Maycomb this
year. He sends a letter saying that he has a new father (presumably, his mother has remarried) and will
stay with his family in Meridian. To make matters worse, the state legislature, of which Atticus is a
member, is called into session, forcing Atticus to travel to the state capital every day for two weeks.
Calpurnia decides to take the children to her church, a "colored" church, that Sunday. Maycomb's black
church is an old building, called First Purchase because it was bought with the first earnings of freed
slaves. One woman, Lula, criticizes Calpurnia for bringing white children to church, but the congregation
is generally friendly, and Reverend Sykes welcomes them, saying that everyone knows their father. The
church has no money for hymnals, and few of the parishioners can read, so they sing by echoing the
words that Zeebo, Calpurnia's eldest son and the town garbage collector, reads from their only hymnal.
During the service, Reverend Sykes takes up a collection for Tom Robinson's wife, Helen, who cannot
find work now that her husband has been accused of rape. After the service, Scout learns that Tom
Robinson has been accused by Bob Ewell and cannot understand why anyone would believe the Ewells'
word. When the children return home, they find Aunt Alexandra waiting for them.
Chapter 13 - ✔✔-Aunt Alexandra explains that she should stay with the children for a while, to give
them a "feminine influence." Maycomb gives her a fine welcome: various ladies in the town bake her
cakes and have her over for coffee, and she soon becomes an integral part of the town's social life.
Alexandra is extremely proud of the Finches and spends much of her time discussing the characteristics
of the various families in Maycomb. This "family consciousness" is an integral part of life in Maycomb, an
old town where the same families have lived for generations, where every family has its quirks and
eccentricities. However, Jem and Scout lack the pride that Aunt Alexandra considers commensurate with
being a Finch. She orders Atticus to lecture them on the subject of their ancestry. He makes a valiant
attempt but succeeds only in making Scout cry.
Chapter 14 - ✔✔-The impending trial of Tom Robinson and Atticus's role as his defense lawyer make
Jem and Scout the objects of whispers and glances whenever they go to town. One day, Scout tries to
ask Atticus what "rape" is, and the subject of the children's trip to Calpurnia's church comes up. Aunt
Alexandra tells Scout she cannot go back the next Sunday. Later, she tries to convince Atticus to get rid
of Calpurnia, saying that they no longer need her. Atticus refuses. That night, Jem tells Scout not to
antagonize Alexandra. Scout gets angry at being lectured and attacks Jem. Atticus breaks up the fight
and sends them to bed. Scout discovers something under her bed. She calls Jem in and they discover Dill
hiding there.
Dill has run away from home because his mother and new father did not pay enough attention to him.
He took a train from Meridian to Maycomb Junction, fourteen miles away, and covered the remaining
distance on foot and on the back of a cotton wagon. Jem goes down the hall and tells Atticus. Atticus
asks Scout to get more food than a pan of cold corn bread for Dill, before going next door to tell Dill's
aunt, Miss Rachel, of his whereabouts. Dill eats, then gets into Jem's bed to sleep, but soon climbs over
to Scout's bed to talk things over.
Chapter 15 - ✔✔-A week after Dill's arrival, a group of men led by the sheriff, Heck Tate, come to
Atticus's house in the evening. As his trial is nearing, Tom Robinson is to be moved to the Maycomb jail,
and concerns about the possibility of a lynch mob have arisen. Later, Jem tells Scout that Alexandra and
Atticus have been arguing about the trial; she nearly accused him of bringing disgrace on the family. The
following evening, Atticus takes the car into town. At about te
[Show More]
.png)
.png)
 By Eric Foner (Test Bank).png)
