Study guide questions – To Kill a Mocking Bird

Chapters 1-3
1- Identify Atticus Finch, Jean Louise (Scout) Finch, Jem Finch, Maycomb, Calpurnia, Charles
Baker (Dill) Harris, The Radley Place, Stephanie Crawford, Arthur (Boo) Radley, Miss Caroline
Fisher, Walter Cunningham, Burris Ewell.

Maycomb was an old town. The people there was super conservative. Poor city. Boring. Hot.

The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was
enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell. The Radley Place jutted
into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and
ran beside the lot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters
but had long ago darkened to the colour of the slate-grey yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket
drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was never swept— where Johnson grass
and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance. Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said
he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon
was down and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he
had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the
town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets
were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions. A
Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and
whistle as he walked.

Miss Stephanie Crawford, a neighbourhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing.
According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the Livingroom cutting some items from The
Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed
by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and
resumed his activities.

Miss Caroline (Their teacher) was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink
cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-
white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop. She boarded across the street
one door down from us in Miss Maudie Atkinson’s upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie
introduced us to her, Jem was in a haze for days.
Burris Ewell was the boy who only went to classes the first day of school.

2- Dill dare Jem to touch the Radley house, because he said that Jem was scared of it.
3- Her first crime was knowing how to write and read. Her teacher said that she had to stop
learning those things at home.
4- That Scout could read and write because she made Scout copy down the Bible.
5- She was angry at him for getting her in trouble with Miss Caroline Fisher, because she tried
to explain that the Cunninghams were too poor to pay for lunch.
6- She said that because the rest of Maycomb considered the Cunninghams trash, so she was
being influenced. She didn't consider Walter as real company. Cal's response was to say that
anybody who came to Scout's house was company, no matter where they came from. She was
also very angry.
7- First she tries to give Walter Cunningham money to pay back later, that he couldn't pay back
because he was too poor, and then she tried to tell Burris Ewell what to do, not knowing that the
Ewells were trash.
8- They didn't have to go to school because no one could make them, and the truant lady
figured that she had done her job just by making them go to the first day of school.
Chapters 4-7
1- They found gum, two pennies, a watch, twine, and two carved soap figures of themselves.
2- The old lady that lived a couple houses down, and she enjoyed harassing Jem and Scout as
they passed her every day on their way to school.
3- He rolled her in a tire into the Radley's front porch.
4- A game pretending to be Boo Radley and making up his adventures.
5- She was a lady on their street that liked gardening and tried to be a kind of mother for Jem
and Scout. She shared a lot of Atticus's views and opinions.
6- She thinks that Boo Radley doesn't want to get out of his house, and that the Radleys are
foot-washing Baptists (very observant).
7- They want to ask him what he does in his house all day, and they want to make him feel
better about staying indoors for so many years. Atticus told them to stop tormenting Boo Radley,
that what they were doing was infringing on his privacy, and not to get near the Radley house ever
again.
 8- He got caught under the fence when he ran away from Boo Radley's house, so he had to pull
them off in order to get through. He found them nice and stitched up and folded on the fence
when he came back for them.
10- Mr. Nathan Radley plugged the hole up with cement because he said the tree was dead.
Chapter 8-9
1- It burnt down, and she didn’t care and was actually kind of happy because she hated being
indoors so much, she just liked her garden.
2-He was a boy who made fun of Scout at school because he said that Atticus defended black
people and got into a fight with her; goes to school with Jem and Scout, scout beats him up after
he made fun of Atticus, brought up Adolf Hitler in class, leads to a talk about democracy.
3-Scout and Francis got into a fight because Francis put down Atticus.
4-Scout taught him to always listen to both sides of the story, and Atticus taught him to always
tell children the truth, because they can always spot evasions and those only muddle them.
Chapter 10-11
1-He shoots Tim Johnson the dog, and Jem and Scout are shocked, because they thought he
was too old to do anything.
2-Jem uprooted all of her flowers and vandalized her front yard.
3-He had to read to Mrs. Dubose every day.
4-He learned that bravery isn't a man with a gun in his hand, but a person who will see
something through no matter what, despite the fact that they know that they have lost the battle
even before they have begun.
Chapter 12-14
1- He becomes difficult to live with, inconsistent, and moody.
2-Lula: a lady at the coloured church who likes to make trouble.
Zeebo: Calpurnia’s son.
Reverend Sykes: the preacher at the coloured church.
3- Calpurnia leads a double life with the Finches, she has better grammar and is more proper,
and with the black people she talks, and acts like them.
4- Aunt Alexandra had to teach them how to be proper, to mother them, etc.
5- Aunt Alexandra believed in a lot of the same things as Maycomb (about ways to behave, etc.)
but she didn't believe in the things that Jem and Scout liked.
6-Alexandra wants to fire Calpurnia and not let Scout run around, but Atticus said that
Calpurnia helped raise Jem and Scout and he couldn't have done it without her and puts his foot
down.
 7- Jem and Scout are getting farther apart because Jem is getting older and moodier, so he
doesn't like being with younger children so much anymore. This leaves Scout hurt and confused.
8-He felt like his mother and stepfather didn't want him and he was just imposing himself on
them.
Chapter 15-17
1-They wanted to warn Atticus that he might be in danger for defending Tom Robinson.
2- Their purpose was to try and lynch Tom Robinson for "raping" Mayella Ewell.
3- Because Scout diffused the mob mentality by standing between them and the jail talking to
them.
4- Mr. Dolphus Raymond: A man who pretended to be the town drunk to give people a reason
why he was so strange by marrying a black women and hanging out with them.
5- Mr. Gilmer: Bob Ewell's racist attorney in the case against Tom Robinson.
Bob Ewell: A drunken, mostly unemployed member of Maycomb's poorest family. In his
knowingly wrongful accusation that Tom Robinson raped his daughter, Ewell represents the dark
side of the South: ignorance, poverty, squalor, and hate-filled racial prejudice.
Mayella Ewell: Bob Ewell's abused, lonely, unhappy daughter. Though one can pity her because
of her overbearing father, one cannot pardon her for her shameful indictment of Tom Robinson.
Judge Taylor: The judge on the Tom Robinson Rape case (Not Prejudice).
6- They showed that her attacker was left-handed, like Bob Ewell.
Chapter 18-21
1- She said that she asked him to chop up a chiffarobe, and then he jumped her from behind
and choked her while she screamed and struggled, and then he raped her.
2- He said that this didn't even happen recently, that he had chopped up a chiffarobe last year,
and that he helped Miss Mayella often. Last year, he had done to chop it up but Mayella came
onto him and kissed him, and Bob Ewell caught them, so he ran away.
3- He had a shrivelled and crippled arm, which meant that he couldn't have choked Mayella and
made the hand-print bruises around her neck.
4- That people aren't always what they seem. And that he is not drunk. He is just pretending.
5- He said to put all of their biases aside and judge the case fairly, so that their ruling might be
fair and true.
6- They pronounced Tom guilty.
Chapters 22-25
1- He cried because it wasn't fair that the Tom should be convicted of something he didn't do,
and the jury knew he didn't do this and yet they still sentenced him to death.
 2- Food given by members of the black community.
3-It showed that Jem was growing up.
4- He spat in Atticus' face and said he would kill him, but Atticus just wiped his face off and
started to walk away. Bob Ewell asked if Atticus was too scared to fight, and Atticus said "No, too
old."
5- He is not afraid of them.
6- According to her, he was "trash".
7- Because he is having a hard time dealing with the confusion of life, so he thinks Boo Radley is
trying to avoid that.
8- She doesn't really believe that they are real people, and she doesn't think that they have a
right to complain. It shows that she is racist.
9- He went crazy and lost hope and tried to run away, so he was shot seventeen times and
killed.
10- That she cares about her brother, and that she's not quite so hard-shelled as she wants you
to think.
11- He said it was a sing to kill cripples and compared it to the senseless slaughtering of
songbirds by hunters and children.
Chapters 26-31
1-She fantasized that he was like one of the normal neighbours that she talked to all the time.
2- She said that "it's time to teach the blacks a lesson". This is different from the other quote
because in there she is mad at Hitler for being racist but in the courthouse she is racist against
black people. This tells me that she is a hypocrite because she did exactly what she was at angry at
Hitler for.
3-They were angry that he had appointed Atticus who would actually try to defend a black
person.
4- She was harassed by Bob Ewell, because he was angry that he didn't win the trial with
respect.
5- She was a ham.
6- They were embarrassed about Scout's mess-up at the play.
7-Cecil Jones scared them, Scout left her shoes at the school, and Bob Ewell attacked Jem and
Scout.
8-Boo Radley.
9-He didn't want shy Boo Radley to be dragged into the limelight.
 10- She didn't want Boo to be embarrassed to be led across the street by an eight-year-old. She
wanted him to seem to be in charge.
11- It shows how Scout has matured since the beginning of the book.