Name: TKAM Chapter 15 – Close Reading – November 2013

DIRECTIONS: Re-read the passage below from last night’s homework. Fill in the boxes to respond to the prompts.

CONTEXT: What leads up to this passage?

A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second- In this box, summarize in your own words what is
floor window and down the side of the building. In the light happening in this section of the passage.
from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against the
front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he
was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his
head.
I made to run, but Jem caught me. “Don’t go to him,” he
said, “he might not like it. He’s all right, let’s go home. I just
wanted to see where he was.”
We were taking a short cut across the square when four
dusty cars came in from the Meridian highway, moving
slowly in a line. They went around the square, passed the
bank building, and stopped in front of the jail.
Nobody got out. We saw Atticus look up from his
newspaper. He closed it, folded it deliberately, dropped it in
his lap, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He
seemed to be expecting them.
“Come on,” whispered Jem. We streaked across the
square, across the street, until we were in the shelter of the
Jitney Jungle door. Jem peeked up the sidewalk. “We can get
closer,” he said. We ran to Tyndal’s Hardware door—near
enough, at the same time discreet.
In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows
became substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving
In this box, explain what is “sickeningly funny” about
toward the jail door. Atticus remained where he was. The
the fact that the men were talking in whispers.
men hid him from view.
“He in there, Mr. Finch?” a man said.
“He is,” we heard Atticus answer, “and he’s asleep. Don’t
wake him up.”
In obedience to my father, there followed what I later
realized was a sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny
situation: the men talked in near-whispers.
 What do the men want? Why are they there?
“You know what we want,” another man said. “Get aside
from the door, Mr. Finch.”
“You can turn around and go home again, Walter,”
“The hell he is,” said another man. “Heck’s bunch’s so
deep in the woods they won’t get out till mornin‘.”
“Indeed? Why so?”
Where is Sheriff Tate, and why does this “change
“Called ‘em off on a snipe hunt,” was the succinct
things”?
answer. “Didn’t you think a’hat, Mr. Finch?”
“Thought about it, but didn’t believe it. Well then,” my
father’s voice was still the same, “that changes things,
doesn’t it?”
“It do,” another deep voice said. Its owner was a shadow.
“Do you really think so?”
This was the second time I heard Atticus ask that
Paraphrase in your own words what is happening here.
question in two days, and it meant somebody’s man would
get jumped. This was too good to miss. I broke away from
Jem and ran as fast as I could to Atticus. Jem shrieked and
tried to catch me, but I had a lead on him and Dill. I pushed
my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into the circle
of light.
“H-ey, Atticus!”
I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face
killed my joy. A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes,
but returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light.
There was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about,
Who did Scout see “last night”? (Where and why?)
and when I glanced around I discovered that these men were
strangers. They were not the people I saw last night. Hot
embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped triumphantly
into a ring of people I had never seen before.
Atticus got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly,
like an old man. He put the newspaper down very carefully,
adjusting its creases with lingering fingers. They were
trembling a little.
“Go home, Jem,” he said. “Take Scout and Dill home.”
We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful
acquiescence to Atticus’s instructions, but from the way he
stood Jem was not thinking of budging.
“Go home, I said.”
Jem shook his head. As Atticus’s fists went to his hips, so
did Jem’s, and as they faced each other I could see little
resemblance between them: Jem’s soft brown hair and eyes,
 How is Jem behaving? What is he doing, and why?
his oval face and snug-fitting ears were our mother’s,
contrasting oddly with Atticus’s graying black hair and
square-cut features, but they were somehow alike. Mutual
defiance made them alike.
“Son, I said go home.”
Jem shook his head.
“I’ll send him home,” a burly man said, and grabbed Jem
roughly by the collar. He yanked Jem nearly off his feet.
“Don’t you touch him!” I kicked the man swiftly.
Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I
intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high.
“That’ll do, Scout.” Atticus put his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t kick folks. No—” he said, as I was pleading
justification.
“Ain’t nobody gonna do Jem that way,” I said.
“All right, Mr. Finch, get ‘em outa here,” someone
growled. “You got fifteen seconds to get ’em outa here.”
In the midst of this strange assembly, Atticus stood
trying to make Jem mind him.
“I ain’t going,” was his steady answer to Atticus’s threats,
requests, and finally, “Please Jem, take them home.”
I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Jem had his own
reasons for doing as he did, in view of his prospects once
Atticus did get him home. I looked around the crowd. It was
a summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them,
in overalls and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars. I
thought they must be cold-natured, as their sleeves were Look back in the book… where else have members of
unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some wore hats pulled the Cunningham family shown up in the book? What
firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, else do we know about these people?
sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. I sought
once more for a familiar face, and at the center of the semi-
circle I found one.
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham.”
The man did not hear me, it seemed.
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment gettin‘
along?”
Mr. Walter Cunningham’s legal affairs were well known
to me; Atticus had once described them at length. The big
man blinked and hooked his thumbs in his overall straps. He
seemed uncomfortable; he cleared his throat and looked
away.
 My friendly overture had fallen flat.
How does this moment connect to yesterday’s
Mr. Cunningham wore no hat, and the top half of his discussion about “diffusion of responsibility”?
forehead was white in contrast to his sunscorched face,
which led me to believe that he wore one most days. He
shifted his feet, clad in heavy work shoes.
“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean
Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time,
remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when
unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.
“I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He’s your
boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?”
Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know
me, after all.
“He’s in my grade,” I said, “and he does right well. He’s a
good boy,” I added, “a real nice boy. We brought him home
for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him
up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for
me, won’t you?”
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people
about what they were interested in, not about what you
were interested in. Mr. Cunningham displayed no interest in
his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a last-ditch
What is really going on here? Remember, we are reading
effort to make him feel at home.
the story through the eyes of a little kid who doesn’t
“Entailments are bad,” I was advising him, when I slowly necessarily understand the world like we (older people)
awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire might. What does she NOT REALIZE is going?
aggregation. The men were all looking at me, some had their
mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they
were standing together beside Dill. Their attention
amounted to fascination. Atticus’s mouth, even, was half-
open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our eyes
met and he shut it.
“Well, Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr. Cunningham that
entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it
takes a long time sometimes… that you all’d ride it out
together…” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I
had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for
livingroom talk.
I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I
could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me.
They were quite still.
 “What’s the matter?” I asked.
Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr.
Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did
a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both
shoulders.
“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.
Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. “Let’s
clear out,” he called. “Let’s get going, boys.”
As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled
back to their ramshackle cars. Doors slammed, engines
coughed, and they were gone.

Why is this moment (the whole passage you re-read above) from the story so important that I singled it
out for a close reading?

What does this passage reveal about where Jem and Scout are in their “growing up” or maturity? What
clues can you spot to show that Jem and Scout are in different places in their “growing up”?