To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Student Reading Response Journal Notes

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper LeeStudent Reading Response Journal Notes • S

Chapter __1_ Title: ______________ Significant Quotation: “Maycomb County had recently been told it had nothing to fear but fear itself” (Lee 6). _______________________________________ Comprehensive Check: (Chapter Summary) _______________________________________ Writing Topic Journal Quick write): The Radley house is both enticing and frightening for the children. Describe a childhood fear or mystery you recall.

To Kill a Mockingbird as a great deal of “Life Laws”… “Laws of life are ethical principles, core values, positive character traits that help people live life successfully. Laws of Life are typically defined by-love, service, perseverance, honesty, respect, responsibility and courage. These values are recognized to be life affirming, support positive citizenship, and transcend religion, culture and national borders.”

Laws of Life • Throughout the TKAMB unit, we will be discussing how ethical principles or laws of life are demonstrated by characters in TKAMB. • Our goal is to think deeply about how laws of life helped characters in TKAMB and ultimately, how laws of life may help us live successfully today.

Chapter __2_ Title: ______________ Significant Quotation: _______________________________________ Comprehensive Check: (Chapter Summary) _______________________________________ Writing Topic Journal Quick write): On my first day of high school…

Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird MAYCOMB: is small, everyone knows what goes on there, and there's rarely any excitement. Scout describes it as being an old, humid, sleepy and laidback town where everyone knows each others business. The differences in social status are explored largely through the overcomplicated social hierarchy of Maycomb, the ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children. The relatively well-off Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with most of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the Cunninghams lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below the Cunninghams. But the black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of admirable qualities, squats below even the Ewells. Maycomb is a racist community.

Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird • The Radley Home: the house stands out from everything else in the town ... there are all sorts of rumors about it and kids were thought to never go inside. It also signifies the odd and unknown that the society tries so hard to push aside and sort of isolate. And Scout comes as a character that will break all rules and disobey and in the end be the one person that did the right thing. So in general, the house is a turning point in the book since it bring not just mystery but also answers to questions that people avoided for so long.

Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird • The School: Scout was really looking forward to it.. "I never looked forward more to anything in my life." is what she recalls. She had spent a lot of time spying on the schoolyard from the tree house getting to know the games and their other activities. • School is filled with rules that Scout does not like. Miss Caroline asked Scout to stop having Atticus read to her. • She was punished for sticking up for Walter Cunningham. • She wants to fight students at school for calling Atticus names due to the trial of Tom Robinson.

Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird The Courthouse: the courthouse was segregated, the African Americans had to sit in the upper level where it was hotter and the whites were on the main level, the courthouse was very loud and crowded with people from the town. It is significant to the theme and plot in the novel. It is where the trial of Tom Robinson takes place.

THEME MAPPING • COURAGE: Lee portrays courage in the characters of Atticus Finch, Mrs. Dubose and Boo Radley. • Atticus: It takes courage for Atticus Finch to go against people's beliefs in order to do what he believes was morally right. • Mrs. Dubose: is courageous because she recognizes she has a flaw and that she has to help fix it to make it go away. She is addicted to Morphine and makes a goal to die free from her weakness. • Boo Radley: is a reclusive person, due to being shunned the society and it takes courage for him to come out of his house, even to save Scout's life. Even after he saves her life, he is scared, although he does not run away once he knows she is safe.

THEME MAPPING Education: The theme of education runs throughout the novel, although not always based in the school. It initially shows Scout realizing that school is not what she was looking forward to, as the teacher is patronizing and sensitive, where as the children are intelligent and used to a harsher environment. Miss Caroline doesn’t understand the ways of the small town, and the small town doesn’t understand the ways of Miss Caroline, leading to a breakdown in communication and general progress and therefore preventing proper education taking place.

THEME MAPPING The Loss of Innocence: • Jem realizes that there are more than one type of people in the world, and not his previous childish thought that everyone is kind, understand and has good morals like his father, Atticus. He loses his innocence when he sees the injustices in the world after the trial, and starts to understand why things such as Tom Robinson’s trial go so wrong. He has grown up and from that he has taken with him important lessons. He learns there are many different people in the world, and a lot of them are stuck in their ways and cannot accept people that are different from them, such as African Americans, and that is why people discriminate against them. • At the very end of the book, Scout losses her innocence when she realizes that Boo Radley has given so much to them- gifts in the tree, a warm blanket on a cold night, folded up pants on a fence and their LIVES, but they have never repaid him. Good neighbors would have given back to him and reached out to him, and she is old enough now to realize that she should have, but she did not. She looses her innocence when she discovers that he is not a crazy, seven foot man who eats squirrels and that it was wrong to believe so. Scout thought her game with Jem and Dill, the "Radley Game", was just innocent and harmless fun, but really she was just as bad as the rest of the community for making fun of an innocent man who minds his own business.

THEME MAPPING • Prejudice and Social Change: Atticus Finch represents a strongly principled, liberal perspective that runs contrary to the ignorance and prejudice of the white, Southern, small-town community in which he lives. Atticus is convinced that he must instill values of equality in his children, counteracting the racist influence. • The children's attitudes about Boo represent in small scale the foundation of racial prejudice in fear and superstition. • The rabid dog that threatens the town has been interpreted as symbolizing the menace of racism. Atticus's shooting of the rabid dog has been considered by many critics as a representation of his skills as an attorney in targeting the racial prejudices of the town. • The central symbol of the novel, the mockingbird, further develops the theme of racial prejudice. For Christmas, Scout and Jem are given air rifles by their father, who warns that, although he considers it fair to shoot other birds, he views it a “sin to kill a mockingbird” because they “don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” The mockingbird represents victims of oppression in general, and the African-American community more specifically. • The unjust trial of Tom Robinson, in which the jury's racial prejudice condemns an innocent man, is symbolically characterized as the shooting of an innocent mockingbird. • Toward the end of the novel, Scout realizes that submitting Boo to a trial would be akin to shooting a mockingbird—just as the prejudice against African Americans influences the trial of Tom Robinson, the town's prejudices against the white but mentally disabled Boo would likely impact a jury's view. • The concept of justice is presented in To Kill a Mockingbird as an antidote to racial prejudice. As a strongly principled, liberal lawyer who defends a wrongly accused black man, Atticus represents a role model for moral and legal justice. Atticus explains to Scout that while he believes the American justice system to be without prejudice, the individuals who sit on the jury often harbor bias, which can taint the workings of the system. Throughout the majority of the novel, Atticus retains his faith in the system, but he ultimately loses in his legal defense of Tom. As a result of this experience, Atticus expresses a certain disillusionment when, at the conclusion of the book, he agrees to conceal Boo's culpability in the killing of Ewell, recognizing that Boo would be stereotyped by his peers. Atticus decides to act based on his own principles of justice in the end, rather than rely on a legal system that may be fallible.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Scout Finch: Scout (Jean Louise Finch) • The narrator and main character who begins her story at almost six years old. A rebellious tomboy, Scout has a fierce disposition toward any who challenge her, but at heart she believes in the goodness of people. Scout reacts to the terrible events of the book without losing hope in humanity.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Jem (Jeremy Finch) • Scout's older brother, who is nearly ten at the beginning of the story. Jem is quieter and more reserved than his sister, and has very high standards and expectations for people. When these expectations are not met, Jem has a difficult time resolving his feelings.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Atticus Finch • The father of Scout and Jem, Atticus is a lawyer and an extremely morally upright man who strives to deal with everyone fairly. Atticus is sometimes overly optimistic, but his unshakable hope in mankind and self-created role as the town 'do-gooder' sustain him. Atticus' wife died when Scout was very small, and he has raised his children only with the assistance of Calpurnia, his black housekeeper and cook.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Calpurnia • A black woman who works as the Finch family's cook and housekeeper. She is one of the many motherly figures in Scout's life and one of the few who can negotiate between the very separate black and white worlds of Maycomb.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Dill (Charles Baker Harris) • A friend of the Finch children, who is a little older than Scout, quite short for his age, has an active imagination, and exhibits a strong sense of adventure. He initiates the first expeditions toward the Radley house, and is Scout's best friend. His family life is less than ideal, and he tends to resort to escapism when confronted with difficult situations. Dill spends summers with his aunt, who lives next door to the Finch family.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Bob Ewell • An evil, ignorant man who belongs to the lowest substratum of Maycomb society. He lives with his nine motherless children in a shack near the town dump. Evidence from the trial suggests that he caught his daughter kissing Tom, proceeded to beat her, and then encouraged her to claim Tom raped her. He drinks heavily and spends his relief checks on whiskey rather than food for his family. Bob holds a strong grudge against Atticus and attacks his children at the end of the novel.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mayella Ewell • The oldest of the many Ewell children, at age nineteen. She lives a miserable and lonely existence, despised by whites and prohibited from befriending blacks. However, she breaks a social taboo by trying to seduce Tom, then reacts with cowardice by accusing him of rape and perjuring against him in court.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Boo Radley • A recluse who never emerges from his house. As a young boy, he was in trouble with the police, and his strictly religious and reclusive parents have kept him indoors ever since. A prisoner in his home, he stabbed his father with scissors once, and no one has seen him since. The town has developed a myth that he is an insane monster who wanders around at night peering into people's windows. Throughout the book, he lives with his brother, who is highly controlling.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Reverend Sykes • The reverend for the all-black congregation, First Purchase African M.E. church, which Scout and Jem visit one day with Calpurnia.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mrs. Dubose • A mean, sick, very old woman who lives near the Finch family. Jem unknowingly assists her with her heroic attempt to conquer her morphine addiction, a fight that wins her Atticus's highest praises.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Stephanie Crawford: is the neighborhood gossip who claimed that she once saw Boo Radley from her bedroom standing outside of her cleaned window one night. Crawford is one of the first on the scene after a loud gunshot is heard behind the Radley house. Because she is the neighborhood gossip, it is unwise to think of anything that she says as true, because most of the time it is not true at all. She is a friend of Alexandra Finch. She lets Miss Maudie live with her when Miss Maudie's house burns down., supposedly in order to steal Miss Maudie's Lane cake recipe. She is thrilled to pass on gossip to the kids about Boo Radley.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Maudie Atkinson • A kind, cheerful, and witty neighbor and trusted friend of Scout's, who also upholds a strong moral code and helps the children gain perspective on the events surrounding the trial. She also loves gardening.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Walter Cunningham • A poor farmer who is among the "Sarum bunch," a crowd which assembles near the town jail the night before Tom's trial in order to start a lynching. He is deeply moved by Scout's friendly words when she tries to diffuse the situation, and as a result leads the rest of the men in going home. Ever after, he respects the Finch family greatly

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Miss Caroline Fisher • Is Scout's first grade teacher and is new to Maycomb, Alabama and its ways. She attempts to teach the first grade class using a new standardized system which she learned from taking certain college courses. She is upset that Scout is far more advanced in reading than the rest of her class, and doesn't like that she is receiving lessons from her father, Atticus. In an effort to standardize the class she forbids Scout from reading. She has good intentions, but proves quite incompetent as a teacher. When Scout tells Miss Fisher that she shamed a student by giving him lunch money, she raps Scout's palms with a ruler (a punishment unheard of in Maycomb). She is also very sensitive and gets emotionally hurt quite easily, as seen when Burris Ewell yells at her, After the Burris Ewell incident, Miss Caroline is seldom seen and soon forgotten.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mr. Underwood: • Mr. Underwood is the editor, writer, and printer for The Maycomb Tribune. Although he is a bigot, he hides in his office next to the jailhouse to protect Atticus and Tom Robinson from the Old Sarum mob that tries to take Tom from the jail to lynch him.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mr. Radley: • Mr. Radley was Boo and Nathan's father, a very religious, strict man who walked to town and back home once a day and never spoke to anyone when they greeted him. He died when Jem and Scout were a few years younger, but Boo didn't even come out of the house then.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Tom Robinson: • Tom is a respectable, humble, kind Negro whom Atticus is defending against the charge that he raped Mayella Ewell, daughter of Bob Ewell. Atticus knows he will lose because Tom is black, but he also knows that Tom is innocent and that he must defend him. Tom was only trying to help Mayella because no one else would, but she made advances that he refused and her father saw them. She claimed that Tom raped her and beat her, but there was no way he could have done it. All of her bruises were on the right side of her face, but Tom's left hand was a withered and useless appendage he'd caught in a cotton gin as a child. Tom was sent to a work prison after his conviction and Atticus was expecting a new trial soon, but Tom was shot trying to escape the prison before Atticus could get him out of jail.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Aunt Alexandra: • Alexandra is Atticus' sister who lives with her husband at Finch Landing, the old homestead. She is constantly nagging Atticus about how he raises Scout because she's a tomboy.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Francis Hancock: • Francis is Scout and Jem's cousin. They see Francis at Christmas when they go visit their Aunt Alexandra at Finch's Landing, but they don't really like him very much. The Christmas after Atticus took on the Tom Robinson case, Scout beat Francis up for saying mean things about Atticus, and her Uncle Jack whipped her for it before he heard her side of things.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Heck Tate: • Heck is the Maycomb County sheriff who hands over his gun to Atticus when confronted with a rabid dog. He's also one of the men in the group who comes to talk to Atticus about the danger of having Tom Robinson locked up in the Maycomb County jail. He didn't want to be responsible if Tom got lynched.

Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mr. Dolphus Raymond: • Mr. Raymond is understood to be a chronic alcoholic. He comes through town bobbing and weaving and drinks from a brown paper bag. He is wealthy, owns one whole side of the riverbank and is from an old family, but lives by himself with his colored woman and their mixed children. When Scout and Dill leave the courtroom because Dill is so upset, they meet Mr. Raymond and discover that he doesn't drink whiskey from a paper sack -- it's Coke. He does it so that people will believe that alcoholism is why he lives the way he does rather than face the fact that he lives with colored people because he wants to.

Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird • Mockingbird • In this story of innocents destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. Throughout the book, a number of characters (Jem, Tom Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr. Raymond) can be identified as mockingbirds—innocents who have been injured or destroyed through contact with evil.

Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird • Toys • The toys represents a way in which the novel can refer back to itself for continuity's sake--much in the same way the story refers back "to time past."

Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird • Watch • The pocket watch that Jem and Scout find symbolizes the passing of time throughout the book, and also how Scout and Jem lose their innocence.

Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird • Old Oak Tree: • Oak tree: It represents how Boo had an emptiness inside of him that made him feel detached, but offering items in the tree was like offering his trust to the kids. He was sharing his past by giving them the various items. When Mr. Radley covered it up and said it was dying (even though it wasn't) blocked off Boo from the world.

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter One Quote: “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. . . . There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.”

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Two Quote: "'Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now. 'I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime”( Lee 23).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Three Quote: “First of all”, he said, “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (39).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Four Quote: “I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find someone else to play with”(54).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Five Quote: “There are just some kind of men who-who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results”(60).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Six Quote: “Then I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hot on. At first I thought it was a tree, but there was no blowing, and tree turns never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp and toast, moved across the porch towards Jem” (71).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. ChapterSeven Quote: “As Atticus once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon. So, I left Jem and tried not to bother him”(77).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Eight Quote: “’Thank who? ‘I asked. ‘Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn't know it when he put the blanket around you’”(96).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Nine Quote: “’Atticus, are we going to win?’” “’No, honey.’” “’Then why-’” “’Simply because we are licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win’”, Atticus said (101).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. Chapter Ten Quote: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thin but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t next in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird” (119).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. ChapterEleven Quote: “…but before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” (140).

QUOTES in To Kill a MockingbirdWhere it says “Chapter Summary” in your Student Response Journal you need to write the quote that I provide you for the chapter. ChapterTwelve Quote: "The dead that she [Calpurnia] had a separate existence outside of our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages" (167).

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Student Reading Response Journal Notes