To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 28

About This Passage

This passage is the attack itself. The chicken-wire ham costume that Scout wore so carefully on the stage now traps her arms when she needs them most. Jem fights, Scout falls, the costume saves her by absorbing the blow that breaks the chicken wire instead of breaking her ribs. A man fights the attacker and pulls Jem free. Scout cannot see who anyone is. Lee writes the whole scene from inside the costume, so the reader feels exactly what Scout feels — confusion, fear, the helpless feeling of arms that cannot move — and only later finds out who came running through the dark to save them.

Narration Prompt

Tell what happens to Scout and Jem on the way home from the Halloween pageant, who saved them, and what Mr. Heck Tate found under the tree, paying attention to how Lee builds the suspense step by step.

Discussion Questions

1. Lee opens chapter 28 with a calm, even funny conversation about haints and Jem carrying Scout's costume awkwardly. How does Lee use this calm beginning to make the attack later in the chapter feel even more shocking when it comes?
2. When Jem first hears the footsteps behind them, he tells Scout it is just old Cecil Jacobs come back to scare them again. Why does Jem keep up the Cecil story even after he has stopped believing it himself?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide