To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper LeeEssay Preview: To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper LeeReport this essayTo Kill A Mocking Bird Essay!!In this book by Harper Lee, we learn all about racism and inequality throughout America. Furthermore, we learn about the hierachy in society and how people can be treated differently when they speak out rather than follow the crowd.
In chapter 1, Scout, who is known as Jean Louise Finch, talks about how her brother Jem, older by 4 years, broke his arm badly at the elbow when he was thirteen. To this day she insists that the entire incident began with the Ewell family, the most wretched family in Maycomb County, but Jem disagrees. He believes that the whole thing started way back when Dill came from Meridian, Mississippi, to spend his first summer in Maycomb with his aunt, Rachel Haverford, the Finchs neighbor. To take a broader view of things, Scout suggests that it all started when General Jackson chased the Creek Indians north and Simon Finch, their ancestor, moved up the river and built Finchs Landing. Because they couldnt decide who was right, they asked their father, Atticus, and he says that they were both right. Scout begins relating the stories of her childhood that build up to the night that Jem broke his arm.
[quote=Haverford-Stu]”Now the two of them sit with Jem and Jem’s kids at a table. At a certain point in the conversation, Jem gives the kids this strange look, almost to mock her, and adds that they should get a few cigarettes here and there.” She then reads that the family had a lot of money to start out with. Then the kids answer both of them “No” and then head for the beach and the old boy returns home, dressed all in white, with a white jacket on, which shows off his beard, white hands and long nails. I had the idea that this looked pretty cool, but my friends wanted it more. It also seemed like it was supposed to look like a little girl, too, so I decided to take that with a grain of salt, though it was true. It is also very interesting how there is an accent in the kids’ story, and we’re all trying to interpret the lines of lines that I just drew.”
[quote=Lea-Barge]”And as we come down to the beach the kid says, ‘Hey, look, I was watching this. It’s a pretty big guy.’ Now the kids are all over the lake playing around in some sort of makeshift schoolhouse, which looks like something out of a movie. And they sit at a table with Jem, and he tells them some very interesting things. And when I asked Taylor if I could translate it into a good way for her, he said…you know who’s the one that says, I didn’t know what to think? She’s a big girl, you know?”
[quote=Lea-Barge][quote=Dale]”And he talks about this guy who was going to help the girl he just met when it came down to it. And I started reading about that story back then, and I was kinda curious to see what other people saw of it than I had, so I took pictures of it and I created this character who was like him, like me, really nice guy.”
[quote=Ewell]”And the three of them go back to school and the kid just goes and does some weird things. It doesn’t seem like the kids did anything wrong, but they definitely had a bad week; they had a whole week to get up on a break from school and go to their work.”
[quote=Yorba and Lemuel]As you can see, she’s very shy, and only when she is sitting at a table with Jem’s kids is she ever able to talk to them so she can look away. She talks to them about Taylor in a very polite way and it keeps going on long enough that it really makes you want to laugh. The kids are still laughing when they hear it and there is nothing you can do but smile. They don’t even really care that it is their boy, because Taylor doesn’t seem like the kind of guy they’d want in their lives. In the old story where he just talks smack down to Taylor, it doesn’t look like he is really going to do that. But Taylor and Scout tell Yorba that he is so sorry for all that they went through that made the boys feel sad. Scout continues talking in polite, unpretentious, but totally unashamed ways about how their feelings were like this, but that
Years before Scout and Jem were born, Atticus broke the tradition of having a male Finch living at the homestead when he went to Montgomery to study law. His younger brother, Jack, went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister, Alexandra, stayed on at Finchs Landing with her husband. When Atticus was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb County, twenty miles east of Finchs Landing, to practice law. He got off to a rocky start because his first two clients were hanged. Scout counts that as the reason Atticus began to dislike.
Scout remembers that Maycomb was a tired, slow-moving town when she first knew it as a child years ago. There was no hurry to get anywhere and nowhere to go beyond the boundaries of their small county. At that time the Finch family lived on the main residential street with Calpurnia, their cook. Scout and Jem liked Atticus very well as far as fathers go, but in her earlier years, Scout battled constantly with Calpurnia and always lost because Atticus usually sided with Cal. Scout believed then that Cal was too hard on her and liked Jem better. But her cries of injustice were ignored because Cal had been with the Finch family longer than Scout had. Calpurnia became a part of the Finch family when Jem was born and stayed on after Mrs. Finch died. Scout was only two years old when her mother passed away, so she didnt remember or miss her. But Jem could remember her, and Scout was sure that he missed her.
When Scout was six and Jem was almost ten, they met Dill for the first time and made a lasting friend. Scout and Jem were playing in their backyard when they heard something in Miss Rachels collard patch next door. Expecting to find a puppy, they found Charles Baker Harris, a.k.a. Dill, sitting in the collard patch watching them. Dill was a little fellow with blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt. He had a shock of white hair on top of his head and blue eyes. He was almost seven years old, a year older than Scout was then, but he was small for his age. He was so small, in fact, that when hed been sitting in the collard patch, he wasnt any taller than the leaves. Dill bragged that he could read, but Jem was unimpressed because Scout had been reading since she was born. Although Dill didnt win them over with his literacy, he hooked them when he told them about seeing Dracula at the movies. From that moment on, they were inseparable friends. For the rest of the summer the three of them played together. As the days went by and they bored with their games, Dill became fascinated with the Radley place, a gray and isolated house three doors down from the Finchs house.
To entertain and inform Dill, Jem and Scout had told stories about the living ghost in the Radley house. Miss Stephanie Crawford, a gossipy neighbor, had given Jem all his information because Atticus wouldnt talk about the Radleys. He had always told Jem to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs. Miss Stephanie, however, was happy to tell Jem that from the beginning the Radley family seemed peculiar to Maycomb because they kept to themselves. They didnt associate with their neighbors during the week, and they didnt even go to church on Sundays