To Kill a Mockingbird: Chapters 4-8
Episode 08
In this episode, Professor Pipes discusses chapters 4-8 of Harper Lee's classic coming of age tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, which include nocturnal adventures, mysterious laughter, and some unprecedented weather. She covers plot summary, characterization, themes, and discussion questions.
Transcript
Introduction:
Hello! I’m Professor Pipes, and today I’m still reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Specifically, chapters 4-8. Sooooooo….. Let’s jump on in!
Summary:
When we last left Scout, school wasn’t much fun for her, but NOW... it’s still no fun. Oh well. One day on her way home, though, she sees tinfoil in the knothole of a tree as she’s passing the Radley house, and she looks in and discovers it’s gum! Mmmmm…. Tree gum… When she tells Jem where she found it, he freaks out and makes her spit it out, but on the last day of school when they both find pennies in the knothole, he decides it might be safe after all. Money solves all problems, apparently. When Dill returns for the summer, the kids roll down the street in a tire for fun and Scout accidentally rolls right into the Radley yard, where she thinks she hears laughter before she runs for her life and escapes! Mwahahaha!!! Scary, right? Well, to prove they’re not afraid, Jem and Dill decide to play the “Boo Radley” game, where all three kids act out the life story of their mysterious neighbor, or as much of it as they know from neighborhood legend. Atticus catches them playing one day and asks them if it has to do with the Radleys, but Jem says no. Liar liar, pants on fire. No, Cooper, I’m joking. Put away the matches.
Moving on! In Chapter 5, Jem and Dill start doing that classic little kid thing: “No girls allowed!” Well, Scout feels lonely so she starts spending more time with her neighbor, Miss Maudie Atkinson, a widow who had grown up with Atticus and his siblings, and my personal hero. Scout asks her about Boo Radley, and is sharply reminded that his name is Arthur, not Boo. Miss Maudie says that she remembers that Arthur was a kind child, but that he may have gone crazy living in that house by now, and after being stuck in my home for just a few months, gotta say, I feel that. She explains that Arthur’s father was a “foot washing Baptist,” which apparently does not just mean a Baptist who washes his feet. It actually refers to a very fanatical religion where they see anything that is pleasurable as sin. You like swimming? Watching Netflix? Listening to the Devil’s Rock and Roll music? According to Mr. Radley, you’d be going straight to hell. Sounds like a fun dad, right? Later on, the kids hatch a genius plan to get Boo to come outside by attaching a note inviting him out for ice cream to the end of a fishing pole and trying to stick it into the Radley’s window. Fail. Not only that, Atticus catches them in the act and gives them a big old lecture about leaving Arthur Radley alone and letting him live his life the way he wants. Double fail.
In Chapter 6, summer is coming to an end, and on the last night the kids decide to sneak into the Radley’s yard and try to look through a window. While sneaking around, they suddenly see a large shadow pass over them. Dun dun DUUUUUN! The kids run away, and they hear a gunshot. Thankfully they escape with their lives. When they get home, they see a group of neighbors talking by the Radley house so they go over to act innocent and curious. Turns out, Mr Radley heard… someone… in the yard and shot at the intruder. Then the group’s attention suddenly turns to Jem. Atticus asks, “where’re your pants, son?” Oh, that’s right. Almost forgot. When they were escaping the backyard, Jem got his pants stuck in the fence, so he ditched them. Turns out he also forgot, so there he is, standing in front of all his neighbors in just his underwear. Classic nightmare fuel. Good old Dill is on top of it, though, and quickly says they were playing strip poker, you know, as all young children do, and he won Jem’s pants. Surprisingly, the lie seems to work, and the kids head to bed. However, late that night Jem decides to sneak out and get his pants back because he’s worried that Atticus will find out what they did and then not trust him anymore. Miraculously he manages to get there and back without getting shot.
Once school and chapter 7 start, Jem tells Scout that when he went back to get his pants, they weren’t tangled in the fence like he left them. Instead, they’d been sewn up and were placed neatly over the fence, like they were waiting for him… Uhhhh… what!?! Naturally, Jem is a bit freaked out because it feels like someone knew what he was going to do, like they could read his mind. Mystery! The kids then find a ball of twine in the knothole and figure it must be a kid’s hiding place, so they leave the twine there, but when no one gets it after a few days, they take it home and decide that all future knothole items are theirs to keep. Later on, they find two statues carved in soap that look like them! Stalker! They can’t think of anyone who carves and also knows them well enough to carve them. Another mystery! Over time, the knothole provides more chewing gum, and then a spelling medal. Atticus says the school used to give those medals out before the kids were born. Soon it provides a broken, gold pocket watch. The kids decide to write a thank you note to the mysterious present giver, (aww, what good manners) but when they go to put it in the knothole, they discover that it has been filled with cement. Mr. Nathan Radley, the son of Old Mr. Radley and brother of Arthur Radley, who moved into the house after their dad died, says that he filled it with cement because the tree was dying. For reasons unknown, to Scout at least, after Jem hears this, he seems really upset and even cries that night.
In Chapter 8, the kids are pleasantly surprised when it actually snows in Maycomb (although for a moment Scout went all Chicken Little and thought the sky was falling). They build a snowman by piling up dirt and plastering it with snow, and they decorate it to look like Mr. Avery, one of their neighbors. Looks just like him…... When Atticus recognizes who they’re imitating, they add Ms. Maudie’s sunhat and clippers, and Ms. Maudie jokingly calls it something that, to Scout, sounded like “morphodite.” Imma just give ya minute to figure out what she actually said… ...Anyway, that night the kids are awakened by Atticus because Ms. Maudie’s house is on fire! While the neighbors help firefighters to put out the blaze and get out Ms. Maudie’s belongings, the kids wait, and freeze, down the road in front of the Radley house. When the fire is finally out and Ms. Maudie’s house is just a pile of ashes, the kids go home, and Atticus realizes Scout is holding a blanket that isn’t theirs. Yet another mystery! Suddenly, Jem appears to lose his mind because he starts telling Atticus all the secrets about the knothole and his pants and everything, but Atticus doesn’t even get mad! Jem then explains to Scout, who is apparently a bit slow on the uptake, that Boo Radley was the one who put the blanket around her when she was distracted by the fire. WHAT!?! So crazy! Scout is freaked out, duh, but Jem just seems excited. Whatever floats your boat, man! The kids visit Ms. Maudie later in the morning and she says that she hated her old house anyway, and now she can build a little house with a big, beautiful garden. I know what you’re thinking! She burned down her house as an insurance scam! But no, that wasn’t it. She’d lit a fire in her house to keep her potted plants warm, and it started a fire. That is the most Ms. Maudie way to burn down a house! Gotta keep the plants warm!
Characterization:
During these chapters, it’s important to talk a little about character development, especially since this is a coming of age story, which means we’re supposed to see the kids grow up. Well, while Scout is still probably ready to beat kids up in the schoolyard if they look sideways at her, Jem has definitely started to mature. First of all, let’s talk pants. Jem makes it clear that he’s not worried about being spanked by Atticus. In fact, he’s never even been spanked by his dad. Instead, he’s worried about losing Atticus’ trust. After being told multiple times by his dad that he shouldn’t be messing with the Radleys, that lesson has finally sunk in, and Jem knows that what he did was wrong, so he has to get his pants. But that’s not the only place where we see Jem’s maturity. Scout doesn’t understand why Jem starts telling their dad all their secrets, but apparently Atticus does, and I’m going to let you in on the secret just in case it went right over your head, too. No judgment. You see, over the past few chapters, Jem has been realizing a bit more about Boo. I mean, Arthur. Sorry, Miss Maudie. He realized that Boo was the one leaving them gifts in the tree. But he also realized that Boo’s brother Nathan is a big old jerk who cemented up the tree to prevent Boo from communicating with the outside world. He cut him off completely. Boo was also the one who gave Scout a blanket to keep her warm, but Jem knows that they can’t give the blanket back, or else Nathan will know that his brother went outside, and it seems like he wouldn’t be pleased by that. I’ve said it before, but, what a jerk!
Analysis:
Next up, let’s talk about the important themes in chapters 4-8.
In these chapters, it becomes really clear that the ASSUMPTIONS that the kids had about the scary, monstrous, cat killing Boo Radley were totally wrong. Instead, Jem realizes that Boo is a kind, thoughtful, gift giving, pants-sewing, blanket bestowing man who is under the control of his mean-spirited brother. Similarly, Scout is told by Miss Maudie that she remembered Boo as a nice boy, not this infamous monster. Miss Maudie makes it clear that one should not judge a person based on rumors about them. In fact, she totally shuts down Miss Stephanie, the neighborhood gossip, who claimed that Boo was peeping into her room at night. Miss Maudie asked, “what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him?” Ooooh she’s going to need some aloe for that epic burn. Miss Maudie makes another good point saying you never know, “what happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets.” While you might think you know everything about someone, there’s a lot of their life that you never see, so it’s not a great idea to make assumptions.
In Chapter 5, Miss Maudie also has a lot to say about morality and what makes someone good. Ultimately, it seems to come down to Compassion. She talks about the morals of Mr. Radley and says, “sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of [Atticus].” She’s not saying that religion is bad, by any means, and she herself is religious, but she’s saying that some people use their religion to harm and judge others. Or, they believe that, because they are religious, they are right and everyone else is wrong. They ultimately shut themselves off from the rest of society because they lack compassion for others. In the case of the Radleys, they shut their son away, too. According to Miss Maudie, Atticus is better than some people are at their very best because he is kind and compassionate. He’s learned to make the best of his life.
The next theme in these chapters is Social Inequality, and we see it in a couple of different ways. First of all, Scout is accused multiple times of “being a girl.” GASP! Oh no! Not a girl! What does it mean to be a girl, you ask? Well, that’s a great question, and Jem has a lot of answers for you. In fact, he uses this “insult” to mean whatever works for the particular situation he’s in or the particular flaw he sees in his sister. So let’s get the full definition, so I can find out what is inevitably wrong with me. As a girl, I’m… Umm, rude, Cooper! I know I’m old, but I’m still a girl! Anyway, as a girl, I 1) am easily scared, 2) always imagine things (but not in a good, creative way), 3) am hated by everyone, 4) talk too much, and 5) am embarrassing. Oh! And as a bonus, according to the Old Mr. Radley and his religion, I’m also literally a sin, by definition. Fun times.
In these chapters we also first start to see the underlying racism that will define the whole story. Scout uses the “n word” in Chapter 4, when she is quoting Calpurnia’s description of folk tales or ghost stories. It is important to remember that she doesn’t know the implications of that word, but it just goes to show how pervasive racism is in their town. This derogatory term just rolls right off the tongue of a small child. Be prepared, though. This may be the first time the “n word” is used, but it’s certainly not the last. In fact, just a couple of chapters later, we see adults use the term, and they should freaking know better! I guess you probably have a pretty good idea of what kinds of people they are… When the kids are sneaking around the Radley yard, Nathan Radley shoots at them, and he outright says it was a black guy. Clearly, he didn’t actually see the small, white children in his yard. He just heard an intruder and made a racist assumption. Assumptions and social inequality are clearly linked.
Food for Thought:
Lastly, I’d like to leave you with some food for thought. Consider these questions as you think about these chapters and continue on with this story.
First, this is a coming of age story, meaning it’s about growing up. What lessons seem most important for the kids to learn in these chapters?
Second, what do you think Miss Maudie means when she says that the Radley place is a “sad house”?
Third, what do you think about Jem’s choice to go back to the Radley house at night, knowing the risks?
Fourth, what are your thoughts on Miss Maudie, now that she’s been thoroughly introduced and why do you feel the way you do?
Finally, what are your thoughts on the other neighbors we’ve met, like Miss Stephanie, Miss Rachel, Mr. Avery, and Nathan Radley?
That’s all for today. Go forth, read a bunch, and be good people.
