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Copywork
About This Passage
Lee's chapter-opening sentence — 'It was Jem's turn to cry' — is one of the most precisely composed pivots in the novel. The verdict has just been polled four times in Chapter 21; this single subject-verb-complement sentence reassigns the burden of weeping to the older child. Lee then sets Atticus against his weeping son in a four-clause inventory of restored composure (vest, collar, tie, watch-chain) — a reassembly of the man who literally undressed during his closing argument in Chapter 20. Copying the passage trains the writer to compose moral parallels by physical detail rather than by commentary, and to recognize that the chapter's opening dialogue ('It ain't right' answered with 'No son, it's not right') performs an entire ethical exchange in fourteen words.
It was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we made our way through the cheerful crowd. “It ain’t right,” he muttered, all the way to the corner of the square where we found At...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, narrate the chapter as a sequence of moral encounters: the walk home with Atticus, Aunt Alexandra's apology, the food on the back steps, Miss Maudie's kitchen, Dill's clown speech, and the news of Mr. Bob Ewell on the post-office corner. Identify which encounter you take to be the chapter's central one and defend your reading.
Discussion Questions
- Atticus tells Jem, 'They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it — seems that only children weep.' Lee places this sentence in the doorway as Atticus is going to bed. What is Atticus claiming about who in Maycomb is morally honest enough to register a verdict like this one, and what does he include himself among the grown-ups who do not weep?
- Miss Maudie tells Jem that Judge Taylor's assignment of Tom Robinson's case to Atticus 'was no accident' — that Judge Taylor 'might have had his reasons for naming him.' Court-appointed defenses normally went to Maxwell Green, the youngest member of the bar. What is Lee asking the reader to recognize about how moral courage in Maycomb is exercised, and why does she place this disclosure in a kitchen conversation rather than in any of the courtroom scenes?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Marked with thin lines of a different color or substance, often water, dirt, or — as here — tears running down a face.
Item 2
Shone with a soft, wet, or polished light; sparkled, especially because of moisture or smoothness.
Item 3
Showing no emotion or reaction; outwardly unmoved by what is happening, often by deliberate self-discipline rather than absence of feeling.
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Critical Thinking
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