To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 1

About This Passage

Selected for rhetorical sophistication (the cumulative catalog of heat effects, culminating in the startling 'teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum' — a simile that turns Southern ladies into pastries), syntactic complexity (the semicolon-linked triplet of images, each intensifying the last), and thematic weight — the heat is not just weather, it is a condition of Maycomb life, a reason people move slowly and think slowly, which will matter when something fast and cruel happens in this town.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Scout opens the novel with what sounds like a straightforward anecdote — 'when he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow' — and then spirals backward through three generations of family history before arriving at the summer Dill came. What is Lee teaching the reader about how this story should be read by forcing that long detour through the Finch ancestry before any of the actual events begin?
2. Dill arrives in Maycomb telling elaborate stories: he has seen 'Dracula,' he wrote a letter to the postman, his father is tall with a black beard. When pressed, some of these stories turn out to be untrue, including the one about his father. What function does Dill's dishonesty serve in the chapter — is it a flaw the author wants us to criticize, or is it doing some kind of useful work? Defend both readings.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide