To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 18

About This Passage

Harper Lee writes one of the chapter's most pedagogical sentences here. Atticus is exploiting the prosecutor's lack of vigilance — Mr. Gilmer dismisses these home-life questions as too trivial to object to — and uses the gap to build, brick by brick, the actual case the jury needs to see. Lee is teaching the reader that important truths often arrive through questions nobody thought worth blocking.

Narration Prompt

Retell the architecture of Atticus's cross-examination of Mayella in three movements: the rapport-building phase about her age and family, the cross-examination phase about the alleged assault, and the final sequence of unanswered questions that ends with Mayella's outburst.

Discussion Questions

1. Lee writes that Mayella's confidence is 'not her father's brash kind' but 'something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.' How does this animal simile expose the difference between Mayella's lying and Mr. Bob Ewell's lying without Lee having to call either of them a liar?
2. When Atticus calls Mayella 'ma'am' and 'Miss Mayella,' she accuses him of mocking her, and Scout reflects that nobody had probably ever spoken to her that way in her life. What does Mayella's reaction reveal about how Maycomb has shaped her understanding of dignity itself?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide