Unit 4: Powerful Openings: "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were
assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

(4) Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.

All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.

In England, Simon was irritated by the
persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens.

Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words
in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.

Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.

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.

They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.

They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.

Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us,
read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.

She had been with us ever since Jem
was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

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 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.

Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect.

As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead.

Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed
with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.

Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed
with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.

But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.

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.

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.

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.

The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection
unforgivable in Maycomb.

The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another
thing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather
only.

According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his
teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb.

The town decided something had to
be done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he was bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys came before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the presence and hearing of a female.

Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum,
when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo.

It was all right to shut him up, Mr. Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal.

Boo’s transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem’s memory.

Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of the Radley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back street.

“Don’t blame me when he gouges your
eyes out. You started it, remember.”

Then I sneered at him.

Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his
palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful.