To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 20

About This Passage

This passage is the apophatic clearing of Atticus's peroration: before he can name the courtroom as the only living home of Jefferson's axiom, he must dispossess the jury of the misuses they already despise. Following Quintilian's imitatio, the sentences reward attention to Atticus's stacked dismissals (Yankees, distaff, public education), the sardonic temporal marker 'in this year of grace, 1935,' and the rhetorical preparation for the positive claim — courts as great levelers — that this paragraph clears space for.

Narration Prompt

In a paragraph, retell the structural architecture of this chapter as Lee builds it: Mr. Dolphus Raymond's confession beneath the live oak, the children's return to a courtroom mid-cross-examination, the rhetorical phases of Atticus's closing argument from forensic detachment through the undressing to the prayer 'In the name of God, believe him,' and Calpurnia's interruption of the speech's exalted final line.

Discussion Questions

1. Atticus reads Jefferson's 'all men are created equal' against three communities of misuse — Yankees, the executive branch, public educators — before relocating the phrase to the courts as its only living home. What philosophical wager does Atticus make by claiming that an axiom about human equality survives only inside an institution rather than across human nature itself?
2. Trace the rhetorical movement of Atticus's closing argument from forensic detachment ('absence of corroborative evidence') through the literal undressing of vest and collar to homiletic intimacy ('Gentlemen,' said as if to Scout). What does this trajectory tell us about Atticus's understanding of where, in 1935 Maycomb, juridical persuasion ends and pastoral persuasion must begin?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide