“‘I don’t like it, Atticus, I don’t like it at all,’ was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of these events. ‘That man seems to have a permanent running grudge against everybody connected with that case.’”
“Mrs. Crenshaw thoughtfully left two peepholes for me. She did a fine job; Jem said I looked exactly like a ham with legs. There were several discomforts, though: it was hot, it was a close fit; if my nose itched I couldn’t scratch, and once inside I could not get out of it alone.”
“Jem said he would take me. Thus began our longest journey together.”
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Mr. Ewell kept the same distance behind her until she reached Mr. Link Deas’s house. All the way to the house, Helen said she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words. Thoroughly frightened, she telephoned Mr. Link at his store, which was not too far from his house. As Mr. Link came out of his store he saw Mr. Ewell leaning on the fence. Mr. Ewell said “Don’t you look
at me, Link Deas, like I was dirt. I a’int jumped your – ” – Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 27. Bob Ewell starts to harrass and follow Tom Robinson’s widow Helen around town, trying to scare her and exert his power
over her. Link Deas warns him and threatens to get Sheriff Tate involved.
“You don’t have to touch her. All you have to do is make her afraid, an if assault a’int enough to keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies Law, so you get outa my sight! If you think I mean it, just bother that girl again.”
Shuffle foot had not stopped with us this time. His trousers swished softly and steadily. Then they stopped. He was running, running toward us with no child’s steps. – Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. This passage is full of suspense and heightened tension, as the author through hints and clues rather than direct statements, tells about Bob Ewell’s pursuit of and attack on Scout and Jem.
“Run, Scout! Run! Run!” Jem screamed.
I took one giant step and found myself reeling: my arms useless, in the
dark, I could not keep my balance.
“Jem, Jem, help me, Jem!”
“Heck,” Atticus’s back was
turned. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.” – Harper
Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus thinks it was Jem who stabbed Bob Ewell, in self-defense, but he refuses to have Sheriff Heck Tate hush it up. He taught his children to lead honest, decent lives, so he feels he cannot be party to spreading a lie and undoing everything he has tried to teach them.
“Scout,” he said, “Mr. Ewell fell
on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”
Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.”
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’d sort of be like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
– Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus asks Scout if she understands why they are keeping Boo Radley’s involvement in the Bob Ewell’s death a secret. Scout understands that Boo, who saved her and Jem, was like a mockingbird and they had to protect him.
To Kill a Mockingbird Quotes
Quote 1: "I told Calpurnia to just wait, I'd fix her: one of these days when she wasn't looking I'd go off and drown myself in Barker's Eddy and then she'd be sorry. Besides, I added, she'd already gotten me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all her fault." Chapter 3, pg. 29
Quote 2: "cootie" Chapter 3, pg. 30
Quote 3: "It was then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment were short-lived." Chapter 6, pg. 61
Quote 4: "pass the damn ham, please" Chapter 9, pg. 83
Quote 5: "that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that ... I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year . . . . but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn't mind me much the way I was." Chapter 9, pg. 86
Quote 6: "'nigger-lover'" Chapter 9, pg. 87
Quote 7: "'whore-lady'" Chapter 9, pg. 89
Quote 8: "I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said." Chapter 9, pg. 93
Quote 9: "'Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'" Chapter 10, pg. 94
Quote 10: "It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived." Chapter 11, pg. 105
Quote 11: "'The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.'" Chapter 11, pg. 109
Quote 12: "'It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.'" Chapter 11, pg. 116
Quote 13: "know[s] now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work." Chapter 13, pg. 137
Quote 14: "'What did your father see in the window, the crime of rape or the best defense to it?'" Chapter 18, pg. 190
Quote 15: "Maycomb gave [the Ewells] Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of its hand." Chapter 19, pg. 194
Quote 16: "'They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only children weep.'" Chapter 22, pg. 215
Quote 17: "Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed." Chapter 25, pg. 244
Quote 18: "'Hey, Boo.'" Chapter 29, pg. 273
Quote 19: "'There's a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it's dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time....'" Chapter 30, pg. 278
Quote 20: "'[m]ost people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'" Chapter 31, pg. 284