To Kill A Mockingbird Full Summary

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Part One:

Chapter 1 Summary

The chapter opens with the introduction of the narrator, Scout Finch, her older brother Jem (Jeremy), and their friend and neighbor, Dill (Charles Baker Harris). It quickly moves into an overview of Finch family history. Their ancestor, a Methodist named Simon Finch, fled British persecution to eventually settle in Alabama, where he trapped animals for fur and practiced medicine. Having bought several slaves, he established a largely self-sufficient homestead and farm, Finch's Landing, near Saint Stephens. The family lost its wealth in the Civil War.

Scout's father, Atticus Finch, studied law in Montgomery while supporting his brother, John "Jack" Hale Finch, who was in medical school in Boston. Their sister Alexandra remained at Finch's Landing. Atticus began his law practice in Maycomb, the county seat of Maycomb County, where his "office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard, and an unsullied Code of Alabama." His first case entailed his defense of two men who refused to plead guilty for second-degree murder. They instead pleaded not guilty for first-degree murder, and were hanged, marking "probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for criminal law."

Scout then presents Depression-era Maycomb ("an old tired town when I first knew it"), describing the summer heat and the slow pace of life ("There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County"). Her father is described as "satisfactory," while her family's black cook, Calpurnia, is strict and "tyrannical." Scout and Jem's mother died of a heart attack when Scout was two and only Jem has occasional nostalgic memories for her. The novel takes place in the summer when Scout is almost six and Jem almost ten.

The real narrative begins with the first meeting between Scout, Jem, and "Dill", a feisty, imaginative boy who is nearly seven but very small for his age ("I'm little but I'm old"). From Meridian, Mississippi, Dill will be spending the summer at the nearby house of Miss Rachel Haverford, his aunt. He impresses the Finch children with his dramatic recounting of the movie Dracula, which wins him their respect and friendship. The three engage in summertime play activities of treehouse-improvement and acting out the plots of several of their favorite books, with Dill proving to be "a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies."

By late summer, having exhausted these pursuits, the children turn their thoughts toward the Radley place, a mysterious household on a curb beyond the Finch house which is said to contain a "malevolent phantom" by the name of Boo Radley. Though never seen by the children, he is rumored by popular superstition to be over six feet tall, with rotten yellow teeth, popping eyes and a drool, eating raw animals. He is often named as the source of strange evil.

Boo's story concerns the story of the unsociable Radley family, who disregarded local custom by "keeping to themselves." Prior to his death, Mr. Radley had only been seen on his daily trip to collect groceries from 11:30-12, and the family worshipped in their own home on Sundays. Their youngest son, Arthur, mixed with "the wrong crowd," a gang of boys who were finally arrested and brought to court after driving an old car through the town square and locking Maycomb's beadle in an outhouse. Though the other boys went to industrial school, Arthur (a.k.a. Boo) Radley's family preferred to keep him hidden inside the home. After fifteen years of this invisibility, it was claimed that the thirty-three-year-old Boo had stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors. Refusing to permit his son to be deemed insane or charged with criminal behavior, Mr. Radley allowed Boo to be locked up in the courthouse basement ("the sheriff hadn't the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes"). Boo was eventually brought back to the Radley home. After Mr. Radley's death, his older brother Nathan arrived to continue keeping Boo inside and out of sight.

Dill develops an insatiable curiosity about Boo, and wants to lay eyes on this strange "phantom," who is said to walk about at night looking in windows. Dill dares Jem to go inside the boundary of the Radleys' front gate. After three days of hedging, Jem's fear of Boo succumbs to his sense of honor when Dill revises his terms, daring Jem to only touch the house. Jem finally agrees to do this. He runs, touches the house, and the three scramble back to the Finches' porch, where looking down the street to the Radley house "we thought we saw an inside of a shutter move. Flick - and the house was still."

Analysis

The first chapter's emphasis on family history and stories within stories suggests the rigid social ties that hold society together in the little town of Maycomb, Alabama, and the inescapable links that tie an individual to his or her family or clan. The book opens with a simple story about how Jem broke his arm at the age of twelve, which will also, cyclically, conclude the book. From the outset, the novel begins to concern itself with the question of "why did this particular situation arise?" and seeks answers in historical origins. The children's attempt to trace the main incident in the novel back to its roots leads them to wonder whether it all began when Dill first arrived in Maycomb and became their friend, or whether the real origins lie deeper in their ancestral history and the chance events that brought the Finches to Maycomb. Their debate speaks to deeper fundamental issues on the nature of human good and evil, and the old "nature vs. nurture" debate. Dill, the new kid in town, represents an outside, relatively new influence upon the children that affects them during their own lifetimes, whereas the family history Scout recounts is a more inexorable pattern which existed long before the children were born. Atticus tells them that they are "both right," suggesting a more nuanced interpretation of the patterns of history, family, identity, and temperament, which the book will from now on set out to explore in more detail.

Scout narrates the book in the first person but in the past tense. Her voice and viewpoint offer a glimpse of local events and personalities through the lens of childhood, which may not always grasp the entire story. She often looks up to Atticus, who always displays an upright, solidly moral response for his reactions to events. However, the voice of Scout often assumes a mature tone in which she writes from a more distant time, speaking of the town and its people in the far-off past tense and offering explanations for outdated terms ("Mr. Radley 'bought cotton,' a polite term for doing nothing"). This narrative device allows the reader to understand more about some of the events that Scout recounts than the young narrator is herself completely aware of.

The Radley house is described as being old, dark, closed-off, and uncivilized in contrast to the rest of the neighborhood: once white, it is now a slate-gray color, with rotten shingles, little sunlight, overgrown yards, and a closed door on Sundays. The Radleys are also differentiated from the community by their willful isolation from the usual patterns of social interaction, which causes the town to ostracize them and unreasonably turn the mysterious Boo into a scapegoat for any odd and unfortunate circumstances that occur. For instance, when various domesticated animals are mutilated and killed, townspeople still suspect Boo even after Crazy Addie is found guilty of this violence. This foreshadows the town's treatment of Tom Robinson later in the book - they will find him guilty despite rational evidence to the contrary.

Scout describes the Radleys' tendency to "keep to themselves" a "predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb's principle recreation, but worshipped at home." Her choice of the word "recreation" to describe church worship hints toward the townspeople's ethical hypocrisy, especially in its close conjunction with the idea of forgiveness, a major Christian virtue. Going to church may not guarantee that people will uphold the virtues of Christianity when worship is reduced to a social event and the laws of society have more bearing upon what is "forgivable" than the laws of the church. This idea is fleshed out in more detail in Chapter 24, in which women from Maycomb's Missionary Society display equal doses of religious "morality" and outright racist bigotry.

Boo is to the children only what they have heard from popular legend, and interpreted in their own imaginations. Scout's retelling of Jem's description of Boo shows how her young mind could not yet distinguish between fact and fiction. Jem explains that Boo "dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were blood-stained - if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off." The children's acceptance of such superstitions as the permanence of raw animal blood shows that they are equally susceptible to accepting the local gossip about the mysterious Boo, as evidenced by Scout's evaluation of Jem's description as "reasonable."

The childish perspective, however easily misled, is also shown in this chapter to probe closer toward truth than the adults are capable of. Dill's comment, "I'm little but I'm old," explains why his height seems disproportionate to his maturity, but also symbolically suggests that "little" people may have a wiser grasp on events than their elders. The physical representation of this facet of childhood is represented in Jem's daring rush into the Radleys' yard, in which he enters a space that has been fundamentally condemned by the entire town. The journey of this one individual against the mores of the entire group, though performed here in fear and on a dare, symbolically speaks toward the events that will follow when Atticus defends Tom Robinson in court and Scout breaks up the mob of townspeople. Dill tries to persuade the other two to "make him [Boo] come out" because "I'd like to see what he looks like." His desire for this "seeing" has symbolic relevance to the idea that children, who are as yet still somewhat innocent and uninfluenced by their society, have a desire to see things more truly than adults, and can be capable of seeing through adult biases, prejudices, and false accusations.

Chapter 2 Summary

Time has passed and it's now September. Dill has returned to his family in Meridian, and Scout goes to school for the first time. She is excited about the prospect of starting school at last, but her first day of first grade leaves her feeling quite differently. Her teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher, is a 21-year-old teacher new to the Maycomb County schools - she herself is from the richer and more cultured North Alabama, and she doesn't understand the ways of Maycomb yet.

Miss Caroline reads a saccharine children's story about cats which leaves the children feeling restless: as Scout says, "Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first graders were immune to imaginative literature."

Half of them had failed first grade the year before. So when Miss Caroline puts the alphabet on the board and asks the class if they know it, and Scout reads it through, then reads from her reader and from the local paper, Miss Caroline forbids Scout to let Atticus teach her to read anymore, as she claims that Scout is learning wrongly. Scout doesn't remember learning how to read; it seems she always knew how; it was "something that just came to me." When Miss Caroline forbids her to continue reading, she realizes how important it is to her: "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

Jem tries to reassure Scout at recess, telling her that Miss Caroline is introducing a new teaching technique which he calls the Dewey Decimal System. Back in school, Scout gets bored and starts writing a letter to Dill, but is criticized again by her teacher for knowing how to write in script when she's only supposed to print in first grade. Scout blames Calpurnia for teaching her how to write in script on rainy days.

Lunchtime comes around and Miss Caroline asks everyone who isn't going home to eat to show her their lunch pails. One boy, Walter Cunningham, has no pail and refuses to accept Miss Caroline's loan of a quarter to buy something with. Miss Caroline doesn't understand, and a classmate asks Scout to help out. Scout explains that Walter is a Cunningham, but Miss Caroline doesn't know what that means. Scout says that the Cunninghams don't accept other people's help, they just try to get by with what little they have. Scout mentally recollects how Mr. Cunningham, when entailed, repaid Atticus for his legal services by giving the Finches hickory nuts, stovewood, and other farm produce. The Cunninghams are farmers who don't have actual money now that the Depression is on. Many professionals in the town charge their country clients in farm produce rather than monetary currency. When Scout explains that Walter can't pay back the lunch money Miss Caroline offered, the teacher taps Scout's hand with a ruler and makes her stand in the corner of the room. Scout and the children are puzzled by this very unthreatening form of "whipping," and the entire class laughs until a locally-born sixth grade teacher arrives and announces that she'll "burn up everybody" in the room if they aren't quiet.

The first half of the day ends and Scout sees Miss Caroline bury her head in her arms as the children leave the room, but she doesn't feel sorry for her after her unfriendly treatment that morning.

Analysis

The description of Scout's first day in this chapter and the next allows Lee to provide a context for the events to follow by introducing some of the people and families of Maycomb County. By introducing Miss Caroline, who is like a foreigner in the school, to some of Maycomb's ways, Lee also reveals Maycomb culture to the reader. Maycomb county children are portrayed as a mainly poor, uneducated, rough, rural group ("most of them had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk"), in contrast with Miss Caroline, who wears makeup and "looked and smelled like a peppermint drop." The chapter helps show that a certain amount of ignorance prevails in Maycomb County. The school system, as represented by Miss Caroline, is well-intentioned, but also somewhat powerless to make a dent in patterns of behavior which are deeply ingrained in the social fabric.

As seen in the first chapter, where a person's individual identity is greatly influenced by their family and its history, this chapter again shows that in Maycomb a child's behavior can be explained simply by his family's last name, as when Scout explains to her teacher "he's a Cunningham." Atticus says that Mr. Cunningham "came from a set breed of men," which suggests that the entire Cunningham line shares the same values. In this case, they have pride: they do not like to take money they can't pay back, and they continue to live off the land in poverty rather than work for the government (in the WPA, FDR's Work Projects Administration). Thus, in Maycomb County, people belong to familial "breeds," which can determine a member's disposition or temperament. All the other children in the class understand this: growing up in this setting teaches children that people can behave a certain way simply because of the family or group that they come from.

The chapter also establishes that Scout is a very intelligent and precocious child who learned how to read through her natural instinct, sitting on Atticus's lap and following along in his book. She doesn't understand that she loves to read until her teacher tells her she can't read anymore: this shows that reading was a pleasure and a freedom she had taken for granted all her life until it is denied to her. The value of some freedoms can't be fully understood until a person is forced to part from them. Similarly, Scout and Jem will learn the full importance of justice later in the book through the trial of Tom Robinson, where justice is withheld and denied to a black man. The implication is that young people intrinsically expect certain human freedoms and have a natural sense for freedom and justice which they only become aware of when the adults in society begin trying to take such freedoms away. Though Scout is young and impressionable, she becomes a spokesperson for her entire class, interacting with the adult teacher comfortably; this shows that though a child, she is more grown-up than some of her peers.

The chapter also shows how much Scout looks to Jem for support and wisdom. He is often wrong in his advice: he thinks that entailment is "having your tail in a crack," when it actually has to do with the way property is inherited, and he calls the new reading technique the "Dewey Decimal System" because he is confusing the library catalogue with the new educational theories of John Dewey. However, he gives his little sister support when she needs it even though he warns her not to tag along with him and his fifth-grade friends at school.

Chapter 3 Summary

Jem invites Walter Cunningham over for lunch when he finds out that the boy doesn't have any food. Walter hesitates but then takes them up on the friendly offer. At the Finches' house, Atticus and Walter discuss farming, and Scout is overwhelmed by their adult speech. Walter asks for some molasses and proceeds to pour it all over his meat and vegetables. Scout rudely asks him what he's doing and Calpurnia gives her a lecture in the kitchen about how to treat guests - even if they're from a family like the Cunninghams.

Back at school, there's a big scene when Miss Caroline screams upon seeing a louse ("cootie") crawl off of the head of one of the boys in the class. This boy, Burris Ewell, comes from a family so poor that Atticus say they "live like animals." Their children come to school on the first day of the year and then are never seen again. The children inform their teacher of this, explaining that "He's one of the Ewells." Miss Caroline wants Burris to go home and take a bath, but before he leaves the room for the rest of the year, he yells crude insults at her and makes her cry. The children comfort her and she reads them a story.

Scout feels discouraged returning home from school. After dinner she tells Atticus she doesn't want to go back. Atticus asks her to understand the situation from Miss Caroline's point of view - Miss Caroline can't be expected to know what to do with her students when she doesn't know anything about them yet. Scout wants to be like Burris Ewell and not have to go to school at all. As Atticus explains, the town authorities bend the law for the Ewells because they'll never change their ways - for instance, Mr. Ewell can hunt out of season because everyone knows he spends his relief checks on whiskey and his children won't eat if he doesn't hunt. Atticus teaches Scout about compromise: if she goes to school, Atticus will let her keep reading with him at home. Scout agrees and Atticus reads to her and Jem from the papers.

Analysis

Atticus's patient teaching gives Scout a lesson that he says will help her "get along better with all kinds of folk:" she has to remember to judge people on their intentions rather than their actions, and put herself into the other person's shoes in order to understand them best. The chapter establishes that Atticus can relate to all kinds of people, including poor farm children -he's a master of seeing things from other people's perspectives. The last sentence of the chapter, "Atticus was right," applies not only to his prediction that Jem will come down from his treehouse if left alone, but also to most issues of character judgement. The opinions of Atticus can usually be trusted, and he is convinced of the importance of dealing fairly and reasonably with all people.

The chapter introduces the Ewell family for the first time, who will figure heavily into the latter part of the book. Burris Ewell and his family manage to live outside the local and national laws because they are so poor and ignorant, belonging to the lowest circle of white Maycomb society. The Ewell children only need to come to school for the first day, and then the town will overlook the fact that they are absent even though schooling is mandatory for all children. Likewise, Mr. Ewell is allowed to hunt out of season because he is known to be an alcoholic who spends his relief money on whiskey - if he can't hunt, his children may not eat anything. This shows an example of how the law, which is meant to protect people, can sometimes be harmful if followed too absolutely. Sometimes it is in everyone's best interests to bend the law in special cases, and the community of Maycomb is willing to allow the Ewells to live outside the law in certain cases, turning a blind eye to their activities. The opinion of the town is that no law will ever force the Ewells to change, because they are set in their "ways" and will never change - rather, the law must change to accommodate them and protect the children, who should not have to suffer needlessly.

Scout also learns that the reason Walter Cunningham doesn't pass first grade lies in the fact that he has to leave school in the spring in order to help around the farm. The Cunninghams are not all necessarily illiterate and ignorant because of a lack of intelligence, but because they are subject to a system which subverts their chances of getting a good education. Because they must keep the farm running in order to survive, and because the school system does not make any accommodations for farm children, there is a self-perpetuating societal cycle for farm families to remain uneducated and ignorant. They are victims, generally, of a social system and, at the time of the book's events, bad economic times. This shows that the county or state needs to make some educational changes in order to help such families and increase literacy and learning - however, the misguided educational measures that Scout is subjected to do nothing for students like Walter and only impede and bore advanced students like herself. Reform energy is currently being channeled inappropriately and unrealistically, and all of society is suffering.

Chapter 4 Summary

School continues; the year goes by. Scout doubts that the new educational system is really doing her any good - she finds school boring and wishes the teacher would allow her to read and write, rather than ask the children to do silly activities geared toward "Group Dynamics" and "Good Citizenship."

One afternoon as she runs past the Radley house she notices something in the knot-hole of one of the oak trees in the Radleys' front yard. It turns out to be two pieces of chewing gum. Scout is careful but she eventually decides to chew them. Jem makes her spit it out. Later, toward the end of the school year, they find in the same place a little box with two polished Indian-head pennies inside - these are good luck tokens. They aren't sure whether these have been left for them, but decide to take them anyway.

Dill comes to Maycomb for the summer again, full of stories about train rides and his father, whom he claims to have finally laid eyes upon. The three try to start a few games, but they quickly get bored. Jem pushes Scout inside an old tire, but it ends up in the Radleys' yard. Terrified, Scout runs back, but Jem has to run into the yard and retrieve the tire. Dill thinks Boo Radley died and Jem says they stuffed his body up the chimney. Scout thinks maybe he's still alive. They invent a new game about Boo Radley. Jem plays Boo, Dill plays Mr. Radley, and Scout plays Mrs. Radley. They polish it up over the summer into a little dramatic reenactment of all the gossip they've heard about Boo and his family, including a scene using Calpurnia's scissors as a prop. One day Atticus catches them playing the game and asks them if it has anything to do with the Radleys. They say it doesn't, and Atticus replies, "I hope it doesn't." Atticus's sternness forces them to stop playing, and Scout is relieved because she's worried for another reason: she thought she heard the sound of someone laughing inside the Radley house when her tire rolled into their yard.

Analysis

The schools have attempted to teach children how to behave in groups and how to be upstanding citizens, but Scout notes that her father and Jem learned these traits without the kind of schooling she is getting. The school may be attempting to turn the children into moral beings, but Scout's moral education happens almost exclusively in her home or in the presence of Maycomb adults and friends. This suggests that schools can only provide limited change in children's moral sensibility, or no change at all - families and communities are the true sculptors of children's sense of what is right and good, and what is not.

Accepting gifts in the Radleys' tree and rolling accidentally into the Radleys' yard are some of the first signs that the children are slowly coming closer to making contact with Boo, coming a little closer to knowing him with each event. They're still terrified, however, by the mystery that Boo presents. Their curiosity and the creation of their drama shows how desperately they wanted to find answers to their questions about Boo in the absence of any real information or knowledge. His strangeness leaves them wanting to know more and more, and the creation of stories occurs partially out of their curiosity and desire to shed light on something strange. Likewise, the townspeople have a tendency to react disfavorably to things that are "different" until they have reasons to understand the difference. This explains why Mr. Dolphus Raymond, in Chapter 20, lets the town think that he is drunk even though he is really just doing things in his own way. However, the children are gradually humanizing Boo - he was referred to in the opening chapter as a "malevolent phantom," but by this point he is a real man whose antisocial behavior marks him as unusual and therefore suspicious or dangerous.

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Chapter 5 Summary

Jem and Dill have become closer friends, and Scout, being a girl, finds herself often excluded from her play. Dill has in childish fashion decided to get engaged to Scout, but now he and Jem play together often and Scout finds herself unwelcome. She often sits with their neighbor, the avid gardener Miss Maudie Atkinson, and watches the sun set on her front steps or partakes of Miss Maudie's fine cake. Miss Maudie is honest is her speech and her ways, with a witty tongue, and Scout considers her a trusted friend. Scout asks her one day ...

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