To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 15

About This Passage

After Scout has unwittingly broken the mob with a string of ordinary questions about Walter and the Cunningham entailment, the chapter pivots on a single physical movement: a grown man kneels to a child. Lee gives us this turning entirely through bodies — Atticus's silence, the impassivity that drops away, the squat that converts a member of a mob back into Walter's father. Mountaineers copy this passage to study how Lee dramatizes moral reorientation through gesture rather than dialogue.

Narration Prompt

Trace the chapter's sequence of confrontations: the Maycomb men in the Finch yard, the Old Sarum men at the jail door, Scout's unwitting intervention with Mr. Cunningham, Atticus's wordless walk home with Jem. What moral test does each scene pose, and how is each test answered?

Discussion Questions

1. Atticus tells Mr. Link Deas in the front yard, 'Link, that boy might go to the chair, but he's not going till the truth's told.' Examine the precise grammatical and ethical structure of that sentence. Atticus has separated outcome (Tom may die) from duty (the truth must be told first). What theory of moral action does this separation require, and how does the rest of the novel — particularly the trial chapters and Tom's death — confirm or complicate it?
2. Lee gives us the mob's arrival 'in ones and twos' and its dispersal 'in ones and twos.' Argue what Lee accomplishes by mirroring the syntax of arrival and departure: what theory of mob psychology does the mirrored phrasing imply, and how does Scout's intervention specifically exploit that theory?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide