To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 17

About This Passage

Lee's adult-Scout narration intrudes on child-Scout's nervousness to gloss the rule Atticus is about to break. The metaphor — frog-sticking without a light — is a country boy's image for hunting blind, and the legal aphorism is a lawyer's. Lee fuses the two registers in one paragraph, telling the reader at once that Atticus's reckless-looking move is in fact a calculated departure from doctrine, and that the narrator is at one remove from the scene she remembers.

Narration Prompt

Reconstruct the rhetorical architecture of Atticus's two cross-examinations — Mr. Heck Tate, then Mr. Bob Ewell — and identify, for each, the single piece of evidence Atticus extracts that he has not yet asked the jury to interpret.

Discussion Questions

1. Scout reports that Mr. Heck Tate 'ceased to terrify' her the moment he sat down without his sheriff's costume. Lee gives us Scout's response to Mr. Tate's clothing before any substantive testimony begins. What is Lee teaching the reader, structurally, about how this courtroom — and the larger novel — must be read?
2. Atticus's voice carries an audible 'edge' precisely once during a long cross-examination — when Mr. Heck Tate admits no doctor was called for Mayella. What does the location of that single fracture in Atticus's amiability disclose about his moral economy as a lawyer in Maycomb?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide