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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage is the chapter's quiet emotional center, before Scout begins her testimony. In a few sentences Lee shows that Atticus has aged on this single night. His instinctive courtesy fails him for the first time in his life. He cannot stand when Aunt Alexandra rises. He repeats Mr. Tate's diagnosis as if he had not heard it the first time. The strong line of his jaw melts. Telltale creases form under his ears. The gray patches at his temples become visible where, until tonight, only the jet-black had been seen. Lee gives us Atticus's grief and exhaustion not in speech but in the geometry of his face — a method she will use again in the recognition paragraph that closes the chapter.
Aunt Alexandra got up and reached for the mantelpiece. Mr. Tate rose, but she declined assistance. For once in his life, Atticus’s instinctive courtesy failed him: he sat where he was. Somehow, I coul...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Narrate chapter 29 as a three-part sequence — the bedroom conversation about Bob Ewell's death; Scout's testimony to Mr. Tate with her costume as evidence; and the recognition paragraph in which Scout finally turns to the man in the corner of Jem's room.
Discussion Questions
- Lee introduces Boo Radley through a head-to-toe physical inventory — sand-stained khaki pants, torn denim shirt, hollow cheeks, delicate indentations at the temples, gray eyes so colorless Scout thinks he is blind, hair dead and thin and almost feathery, white hands that have never seen the sun. Examine why Lee chooses biographical inventory rather than dialogue or backstory for Boo's first appearance, and what the choice tells us about how the novel believes character is most reliably revealed.
- Mr. Tate examines Bob Ewell's perforated sleeves, the puncture marks on his arms, and the shiny clean line on Scout's chicken-wire ham costume, and from these objects reconstructs the entire attack without any testimony from Scout. Compare Mr. Tate's evidential method here to the procedural failure of the Tom Robinson trial in chapter 21. What does Lee suggest about the kind of sheriff Maycomb has, and about the difference between reading evidence and accepting a story?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
In a desolate, gloomy, or cheerless manner; without warmth or hope.
Item 2
A state of great disturbance, confusion, or uncertainty, especially of the mind or feelings.
Item 3
Done from natural inclination or impulse without conscious thought; automatic.
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Critical Thinking
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