from To Kill a Mockingbird
from To Kill a Mockingbird
Introduction
Drawing from events in her own childhood, Harper Lee completed To Kill A Mockingbird just prior to the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. It created an immediate sensation, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and selling over fifteen million copies. Told through the eyes of a six-year old girl growing up in Alabama during the Great Depression, Lee’s novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issue of racial injustice. In this excerpt, Scout, the narrator, applies a lesson from her father to defuse a tense situation, connecting in a neighborly way with the leader of a lynch mob.
ReadingFrom Chapter 3
1Walter looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his eyes, as blue as Dill Harris’s, were red-rimmed and watery. There was no color in his face except at the tip of his nose, which was moistly pink. He fingered the straps of his overalls, nervously picking at the metal hooks.
2Jem suddenly grinned at him. “Come on home to dinner with us, Walter,” he said. “We’d be glad to have you.”
3Walter’s face brightened, then darkened.
4Jem said, “Our daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s. Scout here, she’s crazy—she won’t fight you any more.”
5“I wouldn’t be too certain of that,” I said. Jem’s free dispensation of my pledge irked me, but precious noontime minutes were ticking away. “Yeah Walter, I won’t jump on you again. Don’t you like butterbeans? Our Cal’s a real good cook.”
6Walter stood where he was, biting his lip. Jem and I gave up, and we were nearly to the Radley Place when Walter called, “Hey, I’m comin‘!”
7When Walter caught up with us, Jem made pleasant conversation with him. “A hain’t lives there,” he said cordially, pointing to the Radley house. “Ever hear about him, Walter?”
8“Reckon I have,” said Walter. “Almost died first year I come to school and et them pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em and put ’em over on the school side of the fence.”
9Jem seemed to have little fear of Boo Radley now that Walter and I walked beside him. Indeed, Jem grew boastful: “I went all the way up to the house once,” he said to Walter.
10“Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run every time he passes it,” I said to the clouds above.
11“And who’s runnin‘, Miss Priss?”
12“You are, when ain’t anybody with you.”
13By the time we reached our front steps Walter had forgotten he was a Cunningham. Jem ran to the kitchen and asked Calpurnia to set an extra plate, we had company.
…
14After supper, Atticus sat down with the paper and called, “Scout, ready to read?” The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went to the front porch. Atticus followed me.
15“Something wrong, Scout?”
16I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more if it was all right with him.
17Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers wandered to his watchpocket; he said that was the only way he could think. He waited in amiable silence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and you do all right, so I’ll just stay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taught you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”
18“No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in jail if I kept you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.”
19“I’m feeling all right, really.”
20“Thought so. Now what’s the matter?”
21Bit by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “-and she said you taught me all wrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, please sir.”
22Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.
23“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-”
24“Sir?”
25“-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
From Chapter 15
26I 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 unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, 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.
27“Hey, Mr. Cunningham.”
28The man did not hear me, it seemed.
29“Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment getting’ along?”
30Mr. 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.
31Mr. Cunningham wore no hat, and the top half of his 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.
32“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.
33“I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?”
34Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.
35“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?”
36Atticus 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 effort to make him feel at home.
37“Entailments are bad,” I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire 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.
38“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.
39I 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.
40“What’s the matter?” I asked.
41Atticus 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.
42“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.
43Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. “Let’s clear out,” he called. “Let’s get going, boys.”
44As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled back to their ramshackle cars. Doors slammed, engines coughed, and they were gone.
Excerpted from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, published by Grand Central Publishing.