To Kill a Mockingbird Notes 1-8
Chapter One
The narrator and her brother call their father Atticus
The have a cook named Calpurnia (Cal)
The narrator and her brother Jem meet Dill over the summer.
Dill was spending the summer with his aunt, as he would every summer after
The kids talk about the Radley household
Boo Radley is the son, and everyone is scared of him because he stabbed his father in the leg with scissors
The cops didn’t have the heart to put him in jail, so he was on house arrest instead
Mr. Radley died not long after
Dill dares Jem to try and get Boo to come out of the house, they want to see what he looks like
Jem is scared to, so Dill settles for him just running up onto the porch and touching the house
Chapter Two
The narrator, Scout, goes to her first day of school
Jem tells her she cannot associate with him at school because it is different there
He says they can still play at home, but never at school, she is to leave him alone
Scout’s teacher, Miss Caroline, has introduced a new teaching method to the school that she learned in college
Jem says the method is called the Dewey Decimal system
But, Scout already knows how to read and write
Miss Caroline tells her to forget it all and just to listen to her
Scout doesn’t like this at all
The Cunningham family is very poor, and they don’t take things that they cannot pay back, ever
Walter Cunningham doesn’t have lunch, and Miss Caroline tries to give him money to buy some, he refuses to take it
Scout stands up to explain to the teacher
She tells the teacher that Walter’s family is poor and that he cannot afford to pay her back
She explains they can only pay back with gifts like extra food
Miss Caroline doesn’t believe her and tells her again to forget everything she already knows and to only learn at school
Miss Caroline then whips Scout on the hand in front of the whole class and makes her stand in the corner until lunch
Chapter Three
Scout is mad at Walter because he gave her a bad first impression on Miss Caroline
She tries to fight him but her brother stops her
Jem invites Walter to come home with them for lunch, and Walter eventually accepts
While at lunch, Walter is very polite to Atticus and talks to him about adult things
Walter asks for syrup and pours it all over his meal
Scout thinks this is weird and calls him out on it
Cal pulls her out of the kitchen and scolds her for being disrespectful to Walter and makes her finish her lunch away from the others in the kitchen
When Scout arrives back at school, Miss Caroline is screaming because a boy in the room has a bug of some sort in his hair
The boy is Burris Elwell, and he is very dirty
The Elwell children only go to school on the first day, and never come back
This is Burris’s third time in first grade
Miss Caroline sends him home to bathe
He calls her horrible things and makes her cry
The other children comfort Miss Caroline and convince her to read them another story
When Scout and Jem get home, Scout seems off
Cal apologies to her by making her favorite treat, crackling bread
When Atticus takes her on to the porch for their nightly reading, he asks her what is wrong
Scout explains to her father that she doesn’t want to go back to school because her teacher told her Atticus cannot read to her anymore
Atticus explains to her that because of the law, she has to go to school
He tells her that he will still read to her at night and she is happy with that
Chapter Four
Scout has been through one school year
She is starting to think she is missing out on something within the public school system
As she is running by the Radley house on her way home one evening, she sees silver foil in a hole in one of the trees
She picks it up to find two pieces of mint gum
She goes home and starts chewing on the gum
Jem fins her with the gum and she tells him where she got it
He yells at her to spit it out and to never touch anything on the Radley property again or she will get killed
Cal has been nicer to Scout throughout the school year
Scout and Jem are excited for summer because Dill comes in summer
They are walking home and find more silver in the Radley tree
Jem grabs it and takes it home
It is a ring box wrapped in silver gum wrappers, inside are two perfectly shined pennies
Chapter Five
Jem and Dill start to leave out Scout because she doesn’t think they should play the Boo Radley game anymore
She starts sitting on the porch with their neighbor, Miss Maudie
Scout asks Miss Maudie if she thinks Boo is alive
Miss Maudie tells her that his name is Arthur and that he is alive
She says, “Wouldn’t you stay in the house if you didn’t want to come out?”
Scout goes to the backyard the next day to see Jem and Dill
The boys are planning to put a note in the Radley house to Boo with a bamboo stalk to try and get him to come out and talk to them
Scout gets roped into keeping watch while Jem put the note into the house
The note won’t come off the stick and Atticus catches them
He demands to see the note and scolds the kids for bugging Boo Radley
Chapter Six
The kids tell Atticus they are going to the pond in Dill’s Aunt’s yard since it is his last night there
Instead, they plan to go to the Radley house and peek in the window to see Boo Radley
Scout somehow gets roped into this
They go to the house and look in the window, they see a shadow of a man, he knows someone is there
The kids run as fast as they can, but Jem gets stuck in the fence and has to ditch his pants
They get back to find all of the neighbors looking at the Radley house, it turns out Mr. Radley shot at an intruder, but missed
Atticus tells them to go inside and scolds Jem for not having pants
In the middle of the night, Jem goes back to the house to get his pants
Scout tells him not to, but he goes anyways
He comes back with his pants and is shaking before he falls asleep
Chapter Seven
Scout starts the second grade
Jem tells Scout that when he went back to get his pants, they were laying nicely folded on the fence, sewn up horribly
On the way home from school, they pass by the tree
In the hole on the tree is a wad of twine
The kids decide to leave it there and if no one takes it they will take it
The twine stays, so they take it
Next, the tree has two bars of soap, with each of them carved into the soap
Then, they find an entire pack of gum
They decide to write a letter to the person putting things in the tree and put it in the tree
They go back to find the whole filled with cement
They ask Mr. Radley one day when he is walking by their house, he says that the tree is dying and it helps if you fill the holes with cement, so that’s what he did
Jem asks atticus about the tree and he says the tree isn’t dying
Scout sees Jem crying on the porch
Chapter Eight
Jem and Scout experience their first snow
They build a snowman in their front yard
It is the coldest day in Alabama since 1885
That night, everyone is very cold
Atticus wakes the kids up very early and leads them outside
Miss Maudie’s house is on fire
Atticus tells them to stand in front of the Radley house and stay out of the way
Scout gets very cold standing there, little does she know Boo Radley put a blanket on her while she was watching the fire
Chapter Nine
A boy at school tells Scout that her father is a n***** lover
This is because Atticus has a case as a lawyer where he is defending a black man
Scout tells Atticus about how she wants to fight the boy for saying those things
He makes her promise that she won’t get into fights over rumors about him
The next day, the boy is nagging Scout again
She goes to fight him, but stops after remembering her promise
He calls her a coward
Uncle Jack comes over for Christmas
Atticus’ brother
They all travel to Aunt Alexandra’s house
Atticus’ sister
Scout starts cussing more, and Uncle Jack sits her down for a lesson
He tells her that cussing isn’t ladylike, and that he doesn’t want to hear her cuss for the rest of the week he is staying with them
Scout tells him she doesn’t want to be a lady, but agrees anyways
Atticus gets Scout and Jem air rifles for Christmas
Scout hates her cousin Francis, she thinks he is the most boring child ever, but she has to hang out with him anyway
Aunt Alexandra makes Scout sit at the kid table by herself
Jem and Francis get to sit with the adults
When Scout complains to her father, he tells her they are guests in aunt Alexandra’s home and that they must respect her rules
Scout tells Francis about Dill and how they are going to get married when they are old enough
Francis tells her that he heard he doesn’t have a home, and that he switches between relatives
Scout says no, that he lives in Meridian and comes to town over the summers to stay with his aunt
Francis tells her she is dumb sometimes, but that he guesses she doesn’t know any better
She asks what he means
He tells her she doesn’t know any better because Atticus lets her and Jem run around like wild dogs and calls Atticus nothing but a n***** lover
Scout gets mad at that and chases him through the house yelling for him to take it back
Francis runs into the kitchen and tells his grandma that Scout trapped him in there, when Uncle Jack comes in, he tells him Scout called him a wh***-lady
Uncle Jack yells at Scout because she promised she wouldn’t cuss anymore, he doesn’t let her explain her side of the story
Back at home, Uncle Jack tries to apologize to Scout
Scout explains to him that because he doesn’t have kids, he doesn’t understand them well enough
She tells him he needs to listen to both sides of the story before scolding someone
She tells him her side and makes him swear not to tell Atticus, because she broke her promise and got in a fight over him
Scout overhears Uncle Jack and Atticus talking
She hears Atticus explain his court case to Uncle Jack, and how rumors will get worse as the case goes on
Atticus somehow knows Scout is there and sends her to bed
She wonders how he knew she was there, and later in life realizes he wanted her to hear every word