To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter Summaries Free Essays

Chapter 2-3 Dill goes back to his hometown.. ]em and scout have first day of skool ms. We will write a custom essay sample on To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter Summaries or any similar topic only for you Order Now Caroline tries to give money to Walter Cunningham for lunch but he never has lunch he’s supa poor scout gets in trouble for being able to read and write then burris ewell makes ms. Caroline cry scout wants to drop outta skool but makes a compromise wit atticus that she will go to skool if they keep reading everynight. Chapter 4 Scout thinks something is missing and school wasn’t really in her future. She finds 2 pieces of gum near the Radley property but Jem makes her spit it out then the next day they find two pennies and keep them†¦ Scout and Calpurnia are getting along. Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose meanest old lady ever. Jem roles scout down the road ina tire she falls out and Jem acts tuff and gets the tire out off boo’s yard then they play Boo Radley (reinactment) Jem says boo radly is dead but that makes scout nervous because she knows he isnt Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Chapter 5 Dill purposed to Scout then forgot about it a little later in the summer. Dill and Jem excluded Scout. Scout became closer to Ms. Maudie Atkinson. (Widow Scout describes as chameleon lady, hates her house and gardens. ) Scout and Ms. Maudie talk about the Bible. The 3 kids try to dangle a fishing pole with a note on it saying come out to Boo Radley, but Atticus gets mad. Chapter 6 It is the last day Dill is in Maycomb, and at night they decide to try to catch a glimpse of Boo Radley, but they see a shadow and run away. While they are running, Scout trips and makes a gunshot noise (or Boo shoots not sure) they try to meet at a tree near school but Jem’s pants get stuck on a fence and have to lie to the adults that he lost them in strip poker to Dill. During the night he goes and gets them even though Scout tells him not too. Chapter 7 Scout is now in 2nd grade and Jem tells her that the night he went back to Radley Place for his pants, they had been sewed messily and folded like someone knew he would come back. They also found a ball of grey string in the hiding spot they discovered. The next day they found 2 pieces of soap with images carved in the shape of a boy a other in a crude dress. They realize the images carved in are themselves. They are trying to figure out who did it. Two weeks later they find a whole pack of gum. Four days later they found a broken pocket watch with an aluminum knife. They write a thank-you note to the giver, but Nathan Radley had cemented in the whole saying it was dying but it was really healthy. Chapter 8 Scout says her and Jem haven’t been obeying their dad, Atticus. Mrs. Radley died but no one really cared. It snows for the first time and Scout is scared because she’s never seen snow. They have a snow day and no one but them seems to like the snow. They make a large snow man filled with dirt because they don’t have much snow. Ms. Maudie’s house catches on fire along with Ms. Rachel’s but only Ms. Maudie’s burns down. Somehow a mysterious blanket appears around Scout’s shoulders. It is implied that Boo Radley put it there. Jem comes clean about all their secrets. They return Ms. Maudie’s hat and hedge clipper that they had borrowed to diguise the snowman. Chapter 9 Scout gets mad because Cecil Jacobs says Atticus defends blacks (in court). Scout keeps trying to get out of going to school. Atticus only tells her yes (he does defend a black) and his name is Tom Robinson (a good friend of Cal’s). He doesn’t want to tell Scout what the case is. He says he took the case to keep respect. Scout talks about Cousin Ike. Uncle Jack stays with them for a week and gives them air rifles. Then, they visit Finch’s landing for Christmas. Francis, her annoying cousin, also gives her trouble over Atticus taking Tom Robinson’s case. Chapter 10 Atticus is very old (50) unlike the childrens’ classmates. He has a â€Å"boring† Job. He never drinks or anything so he isn’t very inconspicous. Atticus says its a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is sing. Scout tries to shoot Ms. Maudie’s butt, so Atticus goes over to warn her. The kids go hunting and find Tim a hurt old dog, so they want to help him, but Cal calls around to warn people about the mad dog. The ops come and everyone locks themselves inside. Someone hands Atticus a gun to shoot the dog but he refuses. He ends up shooting the dog and his kids cannot believe he shot the dog. They find out that Atticus’ nickname was old one shot. Ms. Maudie tells the kids he gave up hunting because he thought god gave him an unfair advantage. Chapter 1 1 Jem and Scout hate Mrs. Dubose and think she keeps a pistol concealed, and they tried not to past her house. Atticus says Mrs. Dubose is old and sick and not to let her get to Jem. Jem and Scout go to town to buy himself a little steam engine and Scout a aton. But, Jem gets very mad when she says Atticus isn’t any better than the n*ggers he defends. Scout pulls him away. When they walk back home, Mrs. Dubose wasnt on the porch. Jem snatched her baton and ran through her yard and left only when he ruined all of her camellia flower bushes, he broke Scouts baton. Atticus gets mad at Jem for ruining Mrs. Dubose’s garden and makes him go apologize to her. Atticus says he couldn’t go to church if he didn’t take Tim Robinson’s case. Mrs. Dubose has Jem clean up her yard and says every saturday he has to work on her yard and every ay except Sundays tor a month ne nas to read to her. Scout describes ner as very ugly. While he was reading, she began to become distant (NOT in a good way). They ask if she is okay. Atticus tells Scout what a n*gger lover is. They realize that the alarm clock has been going off a little later each day. They finally finish all the reading and are very happy. Mrs. Dubose dies and Atticus brings a candy box home from her for Jem. Atticus wrote her will and she broke herself from her morphine addiction right before she died. She died free as the â€Å"mountain air† the box has a white camellia in it. He yells â€Å"Oh hell devil! Atticus wanted Jem to see how courageous she was and courage isn’t a man with a gun it is someone that knows they are going to lose but still goes through with whatever they are doing. Chapter 12 Jem is 12 and Scout realizes she shouldn’t bother him. Jem tells her to be a girl. Summer comes and Dill doesn’t come because he has a new father that he will be spending time with him. He st arts reading the paper and all that. Cal says the kids can go to church with her, they are excited. Everyone is respectful of the group, except for Lulu, who asks why Cal brought white kids to a n*gger church. No instruments or books inside, Just a wooden fan for everyone. Even though the kids have dimes, they take Cal’s. The priest introduces them and says, â€Å"you all know their father. † They count the money and say no one can leave until they have $10 to help Tim’s family. The priest says that Atticus was the church’s best friends. Cal tells Scout that Tim is in Jail for supposedly raping Mr. Ewell’s girl. Scout doesn’t know what a rape is. The kids find out that no one from the church can read and that Cal’s supposed birthday is on christmas. Cal worked on Finch’s Landing since she could ork and has always worked for the Finchs. Cal told the kids that she spoke like she was black with her neighbors at church so she wouldn’t be out of place. Chapter 13 Aunt Alexandra visits. Her and Atticus decided it would be good for Scout to have a feminine role model. Atticus comes back and tells the kids that he thinks it is a good idea for Auntie to live with them, but Scout knows it was Auntie’s idea. She became secretary to a Maycomb club. The town is so small and everyone married in it, so Scout says everyone looks alike. Auntie tells Atticus to do and he does tell the kids to live up to the Finch name. Scout and Jem feels like Atticus isn’t the same person, but he changes back because Aunt Alexandra told him to. Chapter 14 When Jem and Scout are going through town, people keep making comments and someone says something about rape, so when Atticus got home Scout asked him what rape was. Atticus says rape is â€Å"carnal knowledge of a female by force and without consent. † She asks him why Cal wouldn’t tell her what rape was if that was all it was. Scout asks if she can go to Cal’s house, but Auntie sharply says no. Scout over hears Auntie saying they should get rid of Cal. Scout and Jem brawl but Atticus eparates them. Scout thinks there’s a snake under her bed but it turns out to be Dill. He hates his new father and tells them that a nearby farmer had been feeding him. Chapter 1 Dill scout and Jem follow atticus to town where they find him sitting in front of Tom robbinson’s Jail cell, he waited until a huge mob of people cam in one of the people being the cunningham father. Scout starts sauing things about mr. Cunningham’s son, and she gets the whole entire mob to leave tom alone without even realizing that she did so Chapter 16 The kids and Atticus go out in the night. In the morning Atticus says Braxton Underwood is a negro-hater, and Aunt Alexandra tells him not to say that infront of Cal, but Atticus says she probably knows and she also knows how much she means to them. Scout has noticed a change in Atticus over the past three days. They talk about how even though Mr. Cunningham was ready to kill Atticus with the mob they are still friends and the mob people are still people otherwise Scout couldn’t have stopped them. Scout says when Walter comes back to school she’s going to kill him, but Atticus tells her NOT to. Atticus tells the kids not to go downtown that day. (NOTE: pg 218 good quote atticus’ parenting and profession) How to cite To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter Summaries, Papers To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter Summaries Free Essays To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter Summaries CH. 1 * The story begins with an injury: the narrator’s brother Jem got his arm broken when he was thirteen. * While the arm is never quite as good as new, it doesn’t interfere with Jem’s mad football skills, so he doesn’t care much. We will write a custom essay sample on To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter Summaries or any similar topic only for you Order Now * Years afterward, brother and narrator argue over where the story really starts: the narrator blames it on the Ewell family, while Jem (the older sibling by four years) puts the beginning at the summer they first met Dill. The flash-forward conversation continues: the narrator says that if you want to get technical about it, everything began with Andrew Jackson, whose actions led to their forefather Simon Finch settling where they did. * The flash-forward becomes a flashback: Simon Finch was a pious and miserly Englishman who left his home country to wander around America, before settling in Alabama with his accumulated wealth, his family, and his slaves. * Simon’s homestead was called Finch’s Landing, and was a mostly self-sufficient estate run by Simon’s male descendents, selling cotton to buy what the farm couldn’t produce itself. The wealth went away with the Civil War, but the tradition of living off the land at Finch’s Landing remained. * Th e current generation, however, has bucked the trend: Atticus, the narrator’s father, studied law in Montgomery, while his younger brother went all the way to Boston to become a doctor. * The only Finch left at the Landing is their sister Alexandra and her quiet, inactive husband. * After becoming a lawyer, Atticus returned to Maycomb, the county seat of Maycomb County, twenty miles from Finch’s landing. * Atticus saved his money to put his younger brother through med school. Atticus feels at home in Maycomb, not least because he’s related to nearly everyone in the town. * Out of the flashback, into the present-time of the story (which we already know the narrator’s actually remembering: hop over to â€Å"Point of View/Narrative Voice† if you want the 411 on that right now). * The narrator thinks about the Maycomb s/he (we don’t know which yet) knew: it’s not a happening place. Everyone moves slower than sweat, and there’s not m uch worth hurrying for, let alone much sense of what might be happening outside the county lines. The narrator lives on the town’s main residential drag with her brother Jem, her father Atticus, and their cook Calpurnia, who is a force to be reckoned with. * You may notice there’s no mom to be found: she died when the narrator was two, and the narrator doesn’t really remember her, though Jem does. * The story really gets underway the summer when the narrator is five going on six and Jem is nine going on ten. * This is the summer Dill arrives in Maycomb. * Their first meeting happens like this: Jem and the narrator are playing in their backyard, hear a noise next door, and go to check it out. The find a small boy, six going on seven but looking younger, who introduces himself as Charles Baker Harris and announces that he can read. * Charles Baker Harris says that people call him Dill, so we will too. * Dill tells the narrator and Jem a bit about himself: he’s from Meridian, Mississippi, but he’s spending the summer with his aunt, the young Finches’ next-door neighbor Miss Rachel. * Unlike the rural Finches, he’s had access to movie theatres, and so he regales them with the story of Dracula. * The narrator asks Dill about his father, who isn’t dead but also isn’t around. Dill gets a bit embarrassed about the dad question, so Jem tells his sibling to shut up. * Dill, Jem, and the narrator spend the summer acting out stories from the books they’ve read, over and over and over, until they start to get bored. * Dill comes to the rescue with a new idea: they can try to make Boo Radley come out. * The Radley Place is the haunted house of the neighborhood, complete with ghost: Boo Radley, who got in trouble with the law as a teenager and has been holed up in the house unseen ever since. The kids think his family might be keeping him prisoner. The house has quite the reputation with the neighborhood kids, who avoid it at all costs. * The narrator tells us a story about Boo that Jem got from Miss Stephanie Crawford, the neighborhood busybody: that Boo, then 33 years old, had been cutting out newspaper articles for his scrapbook when suddenly he stabbed the scissors into his father’s leg, then calmly went back to what he was doing. * After that B oo was locked up by the police briefly, and there was talk of sending him to an insane asylum, but he ended up back in the Radley Place. * Still after that, old Mr. Radley, Boo’s father, died, but he was soon replaced by Boo’s older brother Nathan, and nothing much changed at the Radley Place. * Rumor has it that Boo gets out at night and stalks around the neighborhood, but none of the kids has ever actually seen him. * Jem makes up horror stories about what Boo’s like (think a cross between a vampire and a zombie), but Dill still wants to see him. * Dill dares Jem to go knock on the Radleys’ door. * Jem tries to get out of it without showing he’s scared, but gives in when Dill says he doesn’t have to knock, just touch the door. Jem works up his nerve, dashes up to the house, slaps the door, and runs back at top speed without looking behind him. * The three children, after getting to safety on their own porch, look at the Radley Place, but all they see is the hint of an inside shutter moving. CH. 2 * The summer ends and Dill heads back home to Meridian. * The narrator looks forward to joining the kids at school for the first time instead of spying on them through a telescope like a pint-size stalker. * Jem takes the narrator to school, and explains that it’s different from home – and he doesn’t want his first-grade sibling cramping his fifth-grade style. The narrator’s teacher is a young woman by the name of Miss Caroline Fisher, who’s from North Alabama, otherwise known to the native Maycombians as Crazy Land. * Miss Caroline reads the class a story about cats, and seems blithely unaware that she’s already completely lost her audience, a bunch of farm kids whom the narrator says are â€Å"immune to imaginative literature† (2. 8). * Miss Caroline puts the alphabet up on the board, which all of the class already knows (most of them are starting first grade for the second time). Miss Caroline asks the narrator to read, and is not pleased that she’s already good at it. * Miss Caroline assumes, despite the narrator’s disagr eement, that Atticus has taught the narrator how to read, and decrees that these lessons must stop because Atticus isn’t a licensed teacher and therefore is doing his child more harm than good. * The narrator gets the impression that reading, which seems to come as naturally as breathing, is something like a sin when it’s done out of class. * Trying to stay out of further trouble, the narrator zones out till recess, then complains to Jem. Jem says that Miss Caroline is at the center of educational reform in the school, which he calls â€Å"the Dewey Decimal System† (2. 25). * This new system results in boring class time, so the narrator starts writing (in cursive) a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline makes the narrator stop, saying that first graders print, and cursive isn’t taught until third grade. * The narrator remembers that Calpurnia had passed rainy days by giving writing lessons. * Miss Caroline is halted in her inspection of her students’ lunch es by Walter Cunningham, who doesn’t have one. She tries to lend him a quarter for lunch, but he refuses to take it. * The narrator, whose name we now learn is Jean Louise, steps in, explaining to Miss Caroline that Walter is a Cunningham. * That explanation, crystal clear to Jean Louise, doesn’t mean much to Miss Caroline, so she explains further: the Cunninghams won’t take anything from anybody, preferring to get by on the little they have. * Flashback: Jean Louise knows about the Cunninghams because Walter’s father hired Atticus to sort out an entailment on his property, and paid for the service by barter rather than in cash. Back to the schoolroom present: Jean Louise wants to explain everything properly, but doesn’t have the ability, so she just says that Miss Caroline is making Walter ashamed by trying to lend him money he can’t pay back. * Miss Caroline cracks at this, and calls Jean Louise up to the front of the class, where she pats her hand with the ruler and makes her stand in the corner. * The class breaks out laughing when they realize that the ruler taps were supposed to be corporal punishment. * The bell rings and everyone leaves for lunch, with Miss Caroline collapsing with her head in her hands at her desk. How to cite To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter Summaries, Essay examples