To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 26

About This Passage

Miss Gates is teaching the third-grade class about democracy. She writes the word DEMOCRACY in large letters on the blackboard. She writes WE ARE A in front of it. The class chants the sentence together: 'We are a democracy.' Miss Gates explains that America is a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship — that 'over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody.' Persecution, she says, comes from prejudice. There are no better people in the world than the Jews, and Hitler's hatred of them is, to her, a mystery. The chapter's irony arrives quietly: this same Miss Gates was overheard by Scout, on the courthouse steps after Tom Robinson's trial, saying 'it's time somebody taught them a lesson.' Lee places the speech on democracy and the speech on the courthouse steps in the same teacher's mouth, and lets the contradiction speak for itself.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 26 by following Scout through three settings. First, the walk past the Radley Place — where Scout's feeling about Boo has changed from fear to remorse. Second, the third-grade Current Events lesson — where Cecil Jacobs reports on Hitler and Miss Gates teaches the class about democracy. Third, Jem's bedroom — where Scout asks the question she has been carrying, and Jem reacts in a way that surprises her.

Discussion Questions

1. Scout walks past the Radley Place now and feels 'a twinge of remorse' for ever having peeped through the shutters. How does this change in Scout connect to what she has learned during Tom Robinson's trial about how people get treated when they are seen as strange or different?
2. Miss Gates teaches the class that America is a democracy where 'we don't believe in persecuting anybody,' but Scout remembers Miss Gates saying on the courthouse steps that it was time somebody 'taught 'em a lesson.' What in the chapter shows you that Lee is asking the reader to compare the two speeches and notice the contradiction?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide