To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 27

About This Passage

This is the chapter's central exchange. Aunt Alexandra has watched Bob Ewell's three small revenges accumulate — the WPA firing, the attempt at Judge Taylor's house, the harassment of Helen Robinson — and she names what she sees as a permanent running grudge. Atticus answers with his most characteristic move: he puts himself inside Bob Ewell's mind and offers a generous, even sympathetic, theory of the man's grievance. The passage holds the chapter's two competing readings of Bob Ewell side by side without resolving them, and the rest of the novel will turn on the fact that Aunt Alexandra is right and Atticus is wrong.

Narration Prompt

Recount the chapter's three small troubles, the figure of Mr. Link Deas, the missionary-society scenes, the Halloween preparations, and Aunt Alexandra's interrupted sentence, paying attention to how Lee orders these events in time and tone.

Discussion Questions

1. Lee writes that Bob Ewell was 'the only man I ever heard of who was fired from the WPA for laziness' and then has him accuse Atticus of getting him fired. How does Lee use the gap between what Bob Ewell did and what he says he suffered to characterize the kind of grievance at work in him?
2. Aunt Alexandra calls Bob Ewell's behavior a 'permanent running grudge against everybody connected with that case' while Atticus answers that 'he'll settle down when the weather changes.' What does the disagreement reveal about each character's reading of human nature, and which reading does the chapter's ending appear to endorse?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide