“To Kill a Mockingbird” is set in the sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb. It takes place during the Great Depression, a time when farm towns like Maycomb were hit hardest and tension between its residents was great.
My experience reading this book will undoubtedly be different than most because I have already read it. Even though I know what the outcome of the trial and Boo’s situation will be, I am still thoroughly enjoying “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I experienced a wide range of emotions when reading about Mrs. Dubose, an elderly woman who Jem couldn’t fully appreciate because he only saw her harsh exterior. What Jem didn’t know was that she was losing the battle against a morphine addiction. This was the main reason she acted so coldly towards everyone who was in contact with her. It was sad that Jem couldn’t enjoy spending time with such a courageous woman. Jem’s father, Atticus, said that she was a “great lady” and “the bravest person [he] ever knew.” Atticus wanted Jem to know that courage “isn’t a man with a gun in his hand … it’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
Scout and Jem Finch live with their father, Atticus, a successful lawyer with a strong sense of morality and justice. One summer, Charles Baker Harris (Dill), a scrawny, intelligent young boy, comes to Maycomb to stay with his aunt, Miss Rachel. Aside from discussing the absence of his father, Dill is a very talkative boy. Dill, Scout and Jem quickly become good friends and play various games and act out scenes from their favourite picture shows. Dill soon hears of Arthur “Boo” Radley, a seemingly “insane recluse who only comes out of his house at night to watch the residents of Maycomb sleep.” Apparently, Boo got in trouble with the law early in his life and was imprisoned in his house as a punishment. During his sentence, he supposedly stabbed his father with a pair of scissors, a rumour that only fueled the town’s gossip, Miss Stephanie, to develop even more ridiculous stories of hearsay. Dill is fascinated with Boo’s story and becomes hungry with intrigue. The three children attempt to lure Boo out of his house with little success.
Dill leaves Maycomb to return to his home in Meridien. Scout begins school where her teacher, Miss Caroline, develops an intense dislike for Scout and chastizes her for learning to read. Miss Caroline, a fish out of water, is heckled and teased by Burris Ewell, a young member of the Ewell family, a poor family known for their rudeness and extreme hatred for Negroes.
One day, while walking home from school, Scout discovers the first of many gifts left in the knothole of the tree outside the Radley place. The gifts include two pieces of chewing gum, 2 “Indian-head” pennies, a ball of twine and a spelling award. Scout and Jem wonder who would have left these items in the tree for them.
After a grueling year of school, summer begins and Dill returns to Maycomb. The three friends begin right where they left off and plan to sneak into the Radley house. Late at night, when the residents of Maycomb are fast asleep, Dill, Scout and Jem enter the Radley place through a loose shutter and look around. While in observation of a pair of scissors, Scout notices the shadow of a man and the three kids bolt out the door, leaving in their wake the sound of a shotgun going off. They narrowly escape under a fence leading to the school but, unfortunately, Jem’s pants become caught under the fence and he leaves them there. A large group of adults gather in front of the Radley house talking about how Nathan Radley (Boo’s older brother) “shot at some Negro” in his yard. The next day, Jem finds his pants hung neatly over the fence, and notices that someone had tried to mend them with grey thread. He also notices that the knothole in the tree had been filled with cement. Nathan Radley said that he did that because the tree was dead.
Maycomb experiences its first real winter and, after a light snowfall, Jem and Scout get the day off school. Late at night, Miss Maudie’s house catches on fire and the neighbours come over to help save her furniture. Unfortunately, the house burns to the ground. During all the commotion, someone places a blanket over Scout, who was beginning to get cold. Jem later realizes that Boo had placed the blanket on Scout and that it had also been Boo who had given the presents in the knothole and mended his pants. Evidently, Nathan Radley had filled the knothole with cement in order to prevent Boo from communicating with the outside world.
At school, Jem nearly gets in a fight with Cecil Jacobs after Cecil proclaims that “Scout Finch’s daddy defends niggers.” Atticus had earlier been asked to defend Tom Robinson, a Negro accused in the rape of a white woman. Atticus says that Tom is “innocent but doomed” because no all-white jury would believe a black man over a white woman. Mrs. Dubose, a nasty old woman who lives down the street from Scout and Jem, says that Atticus is “no better than the niggers and trash he works for.” Jem loses his temper and destroys all of Mrs. Dubose’s camellia bushes. As a punishment, Jem has to go over to her house every day and read to her. Mrs. Dubose dies one month before Jem’s punishment would have been over. Jem learns of Mrs. Dubose’s morphine addiction and how reading to her helped combat her addiction. Before she died, Mrs. Dubose had given a box to her maid for Jem in which lied a single white camellia.
Harper Lee writes “To Kill a Mockingbird” from Scout’s (Jean-Louise Finch) perspective. Scout writes the story many years after the incidents in the book occurred. It seems that Scout has grown and matured a lot over the years and, as such, her perspective consists of both thoughtful, analytical comments of an adult and slightly naïve thoughts of a child. For example, she says “the summers were somehow longer and hotter then,” implying that, for a child, the days seem to go on forever and extremes, such as heat, are heightened by the child’s imagination.
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