The rest of the first part of the book documented more of the less important events in the story, but without them the story would have been incomplete. They were mostly to do with learning about Atticus’s character (which was an important part of the second half of the story). These included minor stories like when the dog with rabies was moving towards the neighbourhood (which was a big danger to the residents). With the dog approaching quickly, the duty of shooting it fell on Atticus’ shoulders, as the county sheriff felt he was unable to make the shot as the dog was too far, and Atticus, we discovered was once known as “The Best shot in Maycomb”, a title that was no exaggeration, as Atticus then (unhappily) made the shot with perfect accuracy. Jem and Scout wanted to tell all their school friends about their father’s old reputation, but Atticus told them to keep quiet about it, in the same way as he told them not to fight at school, as Atticus didn’t believe that violence should ever be the answer.
The second story was when Atticus sent Jem over to Mrs. Dubose’s to read to her. Mrs. Dubose was an old, and rather grumpy lady who lived 3 doors down the street from the Finches. Both Jem and Scout thoroughly disliked her because every time they passed her house on their route home from school, she would yell nasty comments about them and their father. One day, Jem finally lost it with her and destroyed her most beloved flowers. As a punishment, Atticus (who held no grudges) sent Jem over to read to Mrs. Dubose after school, and he had to do this for weeks, and each time he read to her she would look almost asleep, but when Jem would stop reading she would tell him to carry on, and correct him on any mispronunciations of words, then abruptly, she would send Jem home. He would have to stay there for a shorter time every day, until finally (after having to read to her for more days than he had expected) he didn’t have to go back there anymore. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Dubose died, and Atticus explained to Jem that he would have eventually sent him over to read to her even if Jem hadn’t done anything wrong, as Mrs. Dubose knew she was dying and more importantly, she was addicted to Morphine and was determined to be free of it before she died, and Jem’s reading was a distraction from her need for the morphine, and he no longer had to read to her when she was free of the addiction (and suffering the pain that the morphine was there to relieve). This was the strongest example of Atticus teaching the children tolerance in the book, as he knew how Mrs. Dubose felt about him (She called him a “nigger-lover” among other things that could have been highly insulting for anyone but Atticus), but he still respected her for her determination in fighting her addiction, and after all she had said about him, Mrs. Dubose had a respect for Atticus because he always kept to his principles no matter what, and was a good man. Towards the end of part one, Jem and Scout got their first guns, and though the story involved wasn’t really important, one piece of dialogue was, as Atticus explained to the children that “It’s a sin to Kill a Mockingbird”, explaining that Mockingbirds didn’t trouble anyone and just sing their beautiful song for people, and thus should be left alone to live how they wanted.
The story’s main plotline took place in the second part, with the trial of Tom Robinson for the rape of Mayella Ewell. The Ewells were Maycomb’s least respected family (even after Negro families), it was a family of eight children of different ages and their single father who who was an unemployed alcoholic and spent all the family’s welfare money on drink, forcing them to hunt and scavenge the local dump for food. The Ewells hated Negroes more than anyone else, probably because even the Negroes (who as a rule were second class citizens) had it better than they did. The eldest child of the family, Mayella was the family’s motherly figure of some sort, she looked after the children and the house, and as we learned (though it is never actually admitted), was the victim of violent (and possibly even sexual) abuse from her father. Tom Robinson was a Negro who worked on a farm in the county, and the county, for reasons specified earlier, appointed Atticus as his defence attorney. Atticus’ children sneaked into the courthouse (where they had to sit in the Negro stand) to watch what ended up to be a desperate struggle, Atticus made it clear to everyone that Tom Robinson didn’t rape Mayella, but rather Mayella made a move on Tom, which Bob saw and was angered by, and then Tom ran away, while Bob beat Mayella. This made more sense than the allegation that Tom Robinson had raped her because the injuries to Mayella were more than likely to have been made by someone left handed, like Bob, and couldn’t have been made by Tom Robinson because his left hand was rendered unusable in a childhood accident with a machine. But, Tom made the fatal mistake of admitting to the court that he had accepted Mayella’s request to help her with some work around the house because he felt sorry for her, and Negroes weren’t supposed to feel sorry for white people. This remark turned the jury against him, and the eventual verdict was that he was guilty (though it was close). Even after this verdict, Bob Ewell told Atticus that he would “get him” and his family, one day.
The end of the story was over a year later. Scout was 9 and Jem was 13 and Scout went to a Halloween activity at school at night. Jem walked her there in the dark, and they became the victims of a trick meant to scare them, perpetrated by Cecil Jacobs, one of Scout’s classmates. After the activity was over, they walked home in total darkness, and heard the same sort of noises as they heard earlier before Cecil Jacobs appeared, and just assumed it was him again, but when they taunted him and called his name he didn’t appear, but there was certainly someone around in the dark, and Scout, who was wearing a large Halloween costume and no shoes, was unable to run. Scout got knocked over, and heard what sounded like a struggle between Jem and a man who smelled of stale whisky. Then, everything went quiet, and she called for Jem but receives no reply, she heard grunting and wheezing and found a body after crawling around for a little while, but it was certainly not Jem, and didn’t seem to be conscious. She decided to go home to try and get help, and when she got nearer the street lamps, she saw a man walking with Jem over his shoulder, heading towards their home. She followed him to her home. Jem’s arm was broken and he was unconscious, but otherwise was alright. When the sheriff went back to search the area where it happened, he found a dead Bob Ewell with a knife in his gut. This was Boo Radley’s knife, he had heard the shouting and went to help, he fought Bob Ewell and he was the one who took Jem back to Atticus. Though Boo would most certainly be known as a hero for this after an investigation, the sheriff insisted that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife, and killed himself. This is because people would have stopped leaving Boo alone, which was something he, by now would not be comfortable with, after living in isolation for most of his life. This reminded Scout of her father’s words “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”, because Boo Radley didn’t do anything to trouble anyone, and thus nobody should trouble him. So Scout finally met Boo Radley, but she never saw him again, but from that point on she understood him. And, as it is told at the beginning of the book, around that point she felt she had learned all of life’s lessons by then.
The reason I think Harper Lee chose to tell this story through the eyes of a young child, was because most children of Scout’s age are very innocent, and thus are naturally unprejudiced. The character of Scout was an especially effective example of someone who is unprejudiced, because she and her brother were intelligent, and they asked their father why everything was how it was, if they didn’t already know. This meant that if a situation such as Tom Robinson’s unjust conviction arose, the children would ask Atticus why people would treat someone like that, Atticus could not give them an answer because there was no reason, just as there was no reason for Tom Robinson to receive 17 bullets in his back as he tried to escape from prison (thinking that as a Negro, he had no hope of avoiding the death penalty anyway).
Young children are also honest almost all of the time, and this was shown in the way Scout would shamelessly point out someone’s flaws (but in a charming way), and she was very down to earth for her age, which was probably another effect of her father being willing to answer any question she had to the best of his ability, something many parents find hard to do. Without the shamelessness, and childish playfulness, Dill, Jem and Scout would have never acted out Boo Radley’s life, and we would never have gotten to know the Boo Radley story so closely, and then the connection to him at the ending would have meant absolutely nothing to us. Even unprejudiced adults like Atticus, Miss Stephanie and Scout’s Aunt Alexandra could never get away with being honest to everyone about everything, and they had no-one to ask about something they didn’t understand either, which was one of the two reasons why telling the story from an adult’s point of view would never have worked. One of the people Scout learned the most from (though she disliked her for most of the story) was her Aunt Alexandra, because she was a lady but not in the same way as the gossipers that she associated with, she in reality didn’t like the status quo but tolerated it because there was nothing she could do about it, and like Atticus, had found a compromise in her life that allowed her to be who she wanted, but still having to accept some rules of society which she didn’t agree with, and at the end of the story, Scout accepted that she had to become a lady, but decided that she would become a lady like her Aunt, rather than like Miss Rachel and the other gossipers. This was also an excellent example of how reading about Scout through a first person perspective complements the story, as we learned about the customs of Maycomb as Scout did, and Scout actually became less innocent as the story progressed, but instead of exchanging innocence for being easily prejudiced like most people would have in that time period, she learned that people are different and to be tolerant of everyone, even if they aren’t as tolerant as you are.
In some parts of the novel, the author made it obvious to the reader that she meant us to pick up on these things, such as when Atticus was guarding Tom Robinson in the county jail, and a mob of locals with shotguns lead by Mr. Walter Cunningham showed up ready to put Tom Robinson to death before the trial, and in the middle of a verbal exchange between Walter and Atticus, she began to talk to Mr. Cunningham as if nothing extraordinary was happening, and told him how she knew his son from school and had him over for dinner once, this embarrassed Mr. Cunningham and he and the others stood down and went away. The most obvious example that Harper Lee put in the novel took place outside the courthouse when the local drunk shows the children that he is in fact, always sober, and the bag he carries around with him actually contains Coca Cola, rather than Whisky as it is alleged. He explains to them that he pretends to be a drunk for the townspeople because he likes to live with Negroes, and the townspeople don’t understand why anyone would want to live like that, so he pretends to them that he is an alcoholic, so they can have an excuse not to like him. When the children ask him why he’s told them all this he explains that it’s because he knows that they, as children, would be able to understand that not everyone wants to live in a different way to everyone else, where most adults wouldn’t.
