To Kill a Mockingbird: Chapters 27-31
Episode 18
This week Professor Pipes finally finishes To Kill a Mockingbird. These chapters are full of big changes and even bigger revelations. Put on your ham armor... because it's Halloween in Maycomb!
Transcript
Introduction:
Hello and welcome to Piper’s Paraphrases. I’m Professor Pipes, and today I’m discussing the very last chapters of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, chapters 27-31, and they really have it all! Mayhem, murder, people dressed up as agricultural products. You know, normal small town stuff. Let’s get started!
Summary:
In Chapter 27, it’s now October, and a few out of the ordinary events have occurred around town. First, Bob Ewell got a job and then pretty much immediately got fired. Of course, he blamed that on Atticus. Second, Judge Taylor was sitting alone one night when he heard a prowler outside his house, but when he went to see, there was no one there and just a cut in his screen door. Spooky! Third, when Helen Robinson is hired by Link Deas, Bob Ewell begins following her to work, harassing and threatening her the whole way. Luckily, Link Deas is a dang BOSS and both insulted Bob and threatened to call the cops if he ever bothered Helen again. Link Deas, funny name, great guy! All of this worries the kids and Aunt Alexandra, since Bob seems to have a “permanent running grudge against everybody connected with that case” Finally, because of some shenanigans and pranking last Halloween, the town decides to have a Halloween event with a pageant at the school, and Scout is going to play a ham! Yay! Since Atticus and Aunt Alexandra are too tired to attend, Scout and Jem go alone, and “Thus began our longest journey together” Dun dun DUNNN!!
In Chapter 28, on their way to school on this dark, spooky Halloween night the kids enter the school yard when suddenly they’re attacked by a GHOST! AHHH! Ok, it’s really just Cecil Jacobs jumping out to scare them, but still. Definitely gave Cooper a spook. The kids hang out until it’s time for the pageant, but backstage Scout accidentally falls asleep. Listening to Mrs. Merriweather drone on and one would make anyone tired. Anyways, she realizes and enters at the very end, embarrassing herself and making Mrs. Merriweather super angry. Whoops. Since she’s so embarrassed, she and Jem decide to wait until everyone leaves before they head home, and Scout decides to stay hidden in her costume. As they head home, the lights of the school go out and they start to hear weird noises, like someone following them. Sounds like the start of a horror movie to me! Eventually, as they near the edge of the field, someone jumps out and wrestles with both Scout and Jem, and in the scuffle they get separated. Scout hears lots of grunts, and a scream, and someone almost squeezes the life out of her before they are pulled out of her grasp. Soon she hears coughing, and then nothing, and as she makes her way toward the street, she sees Jem being carried home by someone! As soon as she makes it home, Aunt Alexandra calls the doctor and Atticus calls the sheriff. What the heck is going on!?! Oh, well I guess we don’t know yet. After Doctor Reynolds arrives, Scout worries that Jem is dead, but the doctor tells her he just has a broken arm. Scout goes to Jem’s room to make sure he’s not dead and sees the stranger who carried him, figuring he must be some farmer who was passing by. Soon Heck arrives and tells everyone that Bob Ewell is lying stabbed and dead in the school yard! Well… That’s a surprise.
In Chapter 29 Heck asks Scout to describe what happened, and she gives us some basic information, but she couldn’t see much since it was dark and she was trapped in her costume. They were walking home and had reached the oak tree near the edge of the schoolyard when someone rushed at them and attacked them. She says that Bob tried to squeeze her to death, but Jem pulled him off of her. Heck notices that there was a gash in her costume, where Bob had tried to stab her. Scout then says that she thought she heard a fourth person under the tree, and realizes it was the stranger. Looking up at him, she suddenly recognizes the tall, pale, thin stranger. It’s Boo Radley! Wow. He looks nothing like I’d imagined.
In Chapter 30, everyone heads out to the porch, and Scout and Boo - sorry, Arthur - sit together and listen to Atticus and Heck argue about what to do about the fact that Jem killed Boo. Atticus starts to talk about how it’s clear cut self-defense, but Heck cuts him off saying that Jem didn’t kill Bob Ewell. Atticus says he’s not ok with covering up what Jem did, but Heck makes it very clear he’s not budging and says that Bob fell on his knife. He tripped on the roots under the tree and fell on his knife. Eventually, it dawns on Atticus that Jem didn’t kill Bob; Boo did. Heck says that he is not going to drag someone out into the limelight for everyone to praise when all they want to do is stay inside and all they were trying to do was protect the kids. It would be cruel and there would be no point. KNIFE Get it. No point. Oh, too soon. Sorry! Heck says that Tom Robinson died for no good reason, and now the man responsible for it is dead, so they should just “let the dead bury the dead” and then he leaves. Atticus asks if Scout understands why they have to say Bob fell on his knife, and she says she does, because telling the truth would kind of be like…….. Killing a mockingbird!
In the final chapter, Scout leads Boo in to say goodbye to Jem, and then he asks if she’ll walk him home. She does, and he goes inside, never to be seen by her again. Turning around, she looks down the block and imagines everything the way Boo must have seen it, thinking back over all the events of the story and realizing that, to Boo, Scout and Jem were his kids, and he was there when they needed him most. At home, she finds Atticus reading in Jem’s room and sits with him until she falls asleep. He brings her to her room, where she claims she wasn’t sleepy; she heard the whole story he was reading. It was about kids who thought this monster was destroying things, but as it turns out, he was really nice. And Atticus reminds her that most people are, once you finally see them.
Characterization:
There is so much character development in these chapters, both in the sense of dynamic characters, and in the sense that we see the development of some characters into more than what we expected of them.
Of course, in a terrible way, we see this in Bob Ewell. He was always terrible. We knew that. But stalking, harassment, and attempted burglary, and then attempted murder of children? He sank to an absolute new low.
But then Boo Radley! Freaking heroic! He saw that the kids were about to be murdered, so he risked his own life to save them! Now we know for sure that he’s not the monster that Jem described. He’s not the creep who lurks at night, like Miss Stephanie claimed. He’s not even just the kind recluse who gives little gifts to the neighborhood kids. He’s a misunderstood, brave, kind, selfless hero who saw the kids as his own, since he never had the opportunity to live the life he probably initially wanted, before being trapped inside for so long. And as Scout states, he’s a mockingbird. Innocent, kind, and vulnerable. Easily abused or taken advantage of. But Heck Tate refuses to kill this mockingbird by exposing him to the whole town. Apparently somebody learned the lesson of the book.
Finally, Jeanne Louise “Scout” Finch. She, too, has learned some lessons in these chapters, and truly begins to grow up, as a result. First, Scout intrinsically knows that it would be wrong to force Boo into the spotlight, exposing him to the gossip of people like Miss Stephanie. Then she carefully watches and kind of takes care of the seemingly fragile Boo, leads him home, and then sees things from his perspective, recognizing the important role that she and Jem played in his life. As Scout puts it, “Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra.”
Themes:
Since these are the very last chapters, I want to hit on all of the themes we’ve covered throughout the book, but since there are a lot, I’ll just hit you with the highlights from chapters 27-31.
First, Compassion. We see this in Link Deas’ compassionate protection of Helen Robinson, Aunt Alexandra dressing Scout in her overalls after the attack, Heck Tate’s care for Arthur Radley’s wellbeing, Scout’s careful choice to have Boo look like he is escorting her down the road, Doctor Reynold’s joking with Scout to make her comfortable, Atticus waiting by Jem’s side all night, and of course Arthur Radley saving the lives of Scout and Jem.
Second, Courage. Atticus mentioned before that courage wasn’t a man with a gun in his hand, but someone willing to fight for what they believed in, even if they might not win. Well, Boo Radley kind of fits both descriptions. He grabbed a weapon in order to fight for the children he loved. He could have been punished by his brother, and he could have died, but he fought for them anyway.
Third, the coexistence of Good and Evil. This is really prevalent in two related ways. First, Boo Radley’s actions. In order to do good and save innocent children, he was forced to kill. Does the good outweigh the bad? Do the ends justify the means? I guess that’s up to you. Well, you and Heck Tate. He also shows both qualities. He hides the evidence of the switchblade and chooses to say that Bob Ewell fell on his knife in order to save Boo from the prying eyes, gossip, and praise of the neighborhood. He even says “I’m not a very good man.” So he recognizes that what he’s doing could be seen as bad, but he thinks it’s the right thing to do.
Which brings us to our fourth theme, Thinking for Yourself. This is less evident in these chapters, but definitely still there, and I think it kind of shows the larger effect of the court case on the town. Link Deas chose to hire Helen Robinson, even though Calpurnia mentioned way back in Chapter 12 that not many people wanted anything to do with Tom’s family. Link did. And not only that, but he stood up for her directly against Bob Ewell. And again Heck Tate, the sheriff, decided to go against the law and hide what really happened because he felt that, even though Tom was found guilty, his death was wrong and now the man responsible for it was dead. He saw firsthand that the law doesn’t always do what was right, so HE did.
Fifth is Social Inequality. Obviously we see this in Heck Tate’s reminder that Tom was a victim of systemic racism, but I would argue that we see it in another way here and throughout the story through the character of Boo Radley. While never confirmed, many literary analysts and psychologists have theorized that Boo Radley may have a personality disorder, mental illness, or learning disability. People have argued everything from autism spectrum to post traumatic stress disorder brought on by abuse to severe social anxiety disorder or agoraphobia. His treatment by the town and by his family certainly points to Boo being “different” in some way, since up until VERY recently (and even often to this day), the treatment of people with disorders or disabilities was horrendous. People would sometimes be sent away from their families either out of fear or embarrassment or just an inability to provide the right care. Religious fanatics like Arthur’s parents might even see him as a punishment for sin, and would therefore want to hide him away out of shame. Even though we can’t point to one surefire diagnosis for this fictional character, and we don’t even know if his isolation was the cause or the effect of it, we certainly see how Boo Radley’s treatment is evidence of social inequality and how society tends to create outcasts of people considered “different.”
Sixth, we really see the culmination of Atticus’ lessons on seeing different perspectives, instead of making Assumptions. Scout does this both literally and figuratively as she stands on his porch looking out over the street and remembering what occurred. She recaps the story, this time viewing it from Boo’s point of view, and seeing his attachment to them gradually grow. She mentions that “One time Atticus said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” This proves that she has finally learned this lesson. She has learned that assumptions are often wrong, and you really can’t understand a person until you see things from their perspective.
Finally, the ultimate lesson in this story is not to kill a mockingbird. This could mean literally, as is the case with Tom Robinson, but hopefully that isn’t something a modern audience needs to be taught. Don’t murder, you guys! Instead, it really means that we shouldn’t destroy the good in this world. Miss Maudie once told us that you never know what’s going on behind closed doors. You can never know everything about someone. So, be the good. Be the bright spot in a person’s life. Support the vulnerable and the innocent. Stand up for the harmless and the kind. Don’t kill the mockingbird that exists in each and every one of us.
Food for Thought:
Now, for the very last time, for this book, at least, I’d like to leave you with some food for thought. Consider these questions as you look back over the book as a whole.
First, Scout tells her dad that “nothin’s real scary, except in books.” What does this mean, and what does it suggest about society or us, the audience, reading this realistic book?
Second, what are your thoughts on Heck Tate’s choice to cover up the true nature of Bob Ewell’s death?
Third, what are your thoughts about Boo Radley, now that we’ve finally, officially met him?
Fourth, now that the book is finished, what other mockingbirds can you see throughout the story? In what ways were they saved or killed?
And finally, is this novel still relevant, and how might its relevance have changed from when it was first published during the Civil Rights Movement to today?
Thanks for watching this episode of Piper’s Paraphrases. Now go forth, read a bunch, and be good people.
