We talked about Chapters 29-31.The slideshow you saw was about
Symbolism of Innocence in To
Kill a Mockingbird.
HOMEWORK:
-Finish the Scottsboro Trials
reading and Questions for next
class.
Chapter 31
Summary:
Scout asks Boo if he'd like to say good night to Jem. Boo doesn't say a word; he just nods. Scout sees that Boo would like to reach out and touch Jem, and tells him he can. She shows him how to gently stroke Jem's hair. After Boo does this, she perceives that he wants to leave, and she leads him to the porch, where he asks her in a near-whisper, "Will you take me home?" She accepts, and allows him to escort her down the block, just like a lady should. She leads him home and he goes inside his house and shuts the door. The narrator, speaking as an older Scout, says she never saw him again.
Standing on Boo’s porch, Scout look out over the neighborhood imagining how Boo must have seen it, and how, for all these years, he watched over "his" children. Back home, Scout sits with Atticus, who begins to read her one of the scary children's stories he has picked up, which ironically mirrors the story of Boo Radley. Scout says she wasn't scared by the night’s events, saying just as Jem had on their fateful walk home, that "nothing's really scary ‘cept in books." She falls asleep while Atticus reads to her, and wakes up while he carries her to bed. She tells him she was listening all the time, and that the book is about a character who was chased and caught and then found to be innocent and "real nice." Atticus tells her, "most people are, when you finally see them." Atticus then spends the rest of the night by Jem’s side.
Analysis:
Scout finally acts the part of the hospitable Southern lady in assisting Boo around the house and seeing him home. She interacts with him in a serious and grown-up fashion. Though she runs to tell Jem when she first discovers Boo is in their house, she reacts against this childish reflex and tactfully gives Boo his privacy. Scout has learned how to be a guide for others, as shown by her symbolic act of leading Boo to safety. She can visualize things from his perspective now, as Atticus once advised her to do, and from his front porch, she imagines how he has seen the years pass, and watched herself, Jem and Dill grow up. In this reflective moment, Scout also neatly summarizes the events of the book, reminding the reader of all that passed for her and her family to reach this point.
Scout shows that even though she has discovered that people (Mr. Ewell) can be evil in unfathomable ways, she still upholds her faith in humankind and can face anything with courage. Unlike Dill, she finds that the real world does follow patterns, and once one knows them, the world of fantasy and books is the only place where real fear can exist. Despite her growth and maturation, Scout is still a child at only eight years old, and we last see her as she falls asleep in her father’s arms. The author very carefully avoids giving the reader any information about Scout’s future. Instead, we are left with an image of Scout when she is discovering fundamental truths about the world. She understands that the world carries both good and evil, and has an unshakable faith in the inherent goodness of “folks”.
