Mariia Shapurko, 412

Ex.4, p.22

1. General characteristics of a text:

The author: Harper Lee is best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller
'To Kill a Mockingbird' (1960) and 'Go Set a Watchman' (2015), which portrays the later
years of the Finch family. Writer Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville,
Alabama. In 1959, she finished the manuscript for her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller To
Kill a Mockingbird. Soon after, she helped fellow writer and friend Truman
Capote compose an article for The New Yorker which would evolve into his nonfiction
masterpiece, In Cold Blood. In July 2015, Lee published her second novel, Go Set a
Watchman, which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird and portrays the later lives of
the characters from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Lee died on February 19, 2016, at the
age of 89. 
Theme: The mockingbird is a symbol of innocence. Atticus explains that killing a
mockingbird is a sin because the bird does nothing but make music for people to enjoy.
Main idea: Tom Robinson is the symbolic mockingbird of the novel and is convicted and
killed for no real reason.
Setting: An old town Maycomb (Maycomb Country)
To Kill a Mockingbird is Scout Finch's coming-of-age story. When the novel begins, she
is just six years old and still has her childish innocence. Through the course of Tom
Robinson's trial, however, Scout learns an important lesson about the failures of justice.
To Kill a Mockingbird is set in rural Alabama in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
African Americans are subject to Jim Crow laws that segregate them from white people and
strip them of their rights as citizens. Racism and prejudice contribute to Tom Robinson's
wrongful conviction.
Characters: The main character and narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird is Jean Louise
Finch, though she goes by the name Scout. She's an overall-wearing, tree-climbing tomboy
who is six years old at the start. Then there's Jem Finch, Scout's older brother by four years.
There's also Atticus Finch, their father. He's a widower. He's also a lawyer, which means
the Finches are fairly well off for their community. He's kind of a paragon of virtue.
His opposite is Bob Ewell. He's a poor, drunken, hate-filled man. His daughter is Mayella
Ewell. And their story intersects with Tom Robinson, a black field hand. Then
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there's Arthur 'Boo' Radley. He's a recluse living in a creepy house near the Finches and
though his presence is felt, he's rarely seen. Okay, let's get to the story.
Type of narration: 3rd person of view (description of the town), 1st person of view
(narration)
The prevailing mood of the extract: lyrical

2. Lexical peculiarities:
a) Semantic classes of words:

Monosemantic: Maycomb, Atticus, father, summer, courthouse, optimism, talcum,

nightfall.

Polysemantic: to fear, fear, to treat, to play, to hurry, hurry, soft, angles, time.

Homophones: buy – by, there – their, sweat - sweet

Homonyms: to fear- fear

Synonyms: go- move, amble

Antonyms: before – after, morning - noon – nightfall,

Set phrases: took their time (to need a long time)

Idioms: “she is all angles and bones” - She is thin in size.

Phraseological units: live on

Proper names: Hoover, Maycomb, Atticus, Jem, Calpurnia

b) Structure of the word:

Simple: sweet, time, fear, soft, dog, stiff, street, buy, money

Derived: residential, satisfactory, courteous, detachment

Compound: twenty-four, three-o’clock, courthouse, nightfall, twenty-four

Compound-derived: sidewalks

c) Semantic fields: time, three-o’clock naps, noon, morning, hours, hurry, recently.
Thematic group:
Buildings: courthouse, stores
Time of the day: noon, nightfall, morning

d) Stylistic stratification of words:

Borrowing: talcum (from Medieval Latin talcum); amble (from Old French ambler);

optimism (from French optimisme (1737), from Modern Latin optimum)
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Formal (literary, bookish): amble across, snuffle, nearsighted

Neutral: people, money, to buy, to play, to read, to see, town

Colloquial:

 Jargonisms: residential, courthouse

3. Grammatical peculiarities:
a) Morphology:

Use of tenses and voices: Past Tenses (In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop;
People moved slowly), Past Perfect Passive (Maycomb Country had recently been told that
it had nothing to fear but fear itself)
Mood: Indicative (Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones…)

Grammatical constructions:

 Possessive case: summer’s day; men’s stiff collars; boundaries of Maycomb

Country, a time of vague optimism, shade of the live oaks.
 Degrees of comparison: positive (courteous, wide, sweet, old) comparative (hotter,
longer)
 Infinitive: 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 Malcomb Country.
 Participle II: Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s
day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live
oaks on the square.
 Sequence of tenses: Past simple and Past Simple (Somehow, it was hotter then: a
black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.)

Peculiar features of parts of speech usage:

 Articles: an old town, on the sidewalks, across the square, boundaries of Malcomb
Country (zero article)
 Nouns: Abstract – detachment, optimism, hurry, time, fear
Concrete: people, money, teacakes, street, hand, cook
Countable: street, oaks, stores, father, town, sidewalks, bed
Uncountable: detachment, time, money, weather.
 Pronouns: personal (I, she, he, it), possessive (her, their), negative (nothing,
nowhere), indefinite (something), reflexive (itself), demonstrative (that).
 Verbs: to buy, seemed, was, hitched, had recently been told, played, to see
 Adjectives/adverbs: slowly, long, soft, black, courteous, wide
 Numerals: first (ordinal), nine, three, twenty (cardinal), twice.
 Mariia Shapurko, 412
b) Syntax:

Sentences’ structure and their communicative types: Affirmative (Maycomb was an old
town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it; People moved slowly then.)

Simple: People moved slowly then. Calpurnia was something else again. Men’s stiff
collars wilted by nine in the morning.

Compound: Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.

Complex: Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were
like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

Compound-Complex: But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people:
Maycomb Country had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Homogeneous members of sentences: She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted;
she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.

4. Stylistic peculiarities:
a) Phono-graphical features:
Alliteration- … for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with,
nothing to see…; … suffered on a summer’s day’; ladies bathed before noon…; … with
frostings of sweat and sweet talcum; grass grew on the sidewalks.
Assonance: … with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum; it had nothing to fear but fear
itself.
Onomatopoeia: sweltering

b) Lexical stylistic devices:

Metonymy: Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.
Metaphor: the courthouse sagged in the square; the black dog suffered on a summer’s
day; in rainy weather the streets turned to red slop.
Epithet: sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square; vague optimism.
Simile: … and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet
talcum; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.
Hyperbole: A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.

c) Syntactical stylistic devices:

Repetition: 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 Country.
(anaphora)
Enumeration: She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand
was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard.
 Mariia Shapurko, 412
Asyndeton: 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 Country.;
She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a
bed slat and twice as hard.
Ellipsis: We lived on the main residential street in town – Atticus, Jem and I, plus
Calpurnia our cook.