To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 3

About This Passage

Harper Lee lets Atticus explain Maycomb's class arrangement in the diction of a constitutional scholar — 'exclusive society,' 'certain privileges,' 'judiciously allowed.' The vocabulary is so dignified that the statement it dresses (the town has agreed to stop enforcing the law on the Ewells) sounds almost respectable. Mountaineers should notice that every elevated word is doing the work of a polite euphemism, and that Lee's irony is in the register itself, not in anything Atticus says outright.

Narration Prompt

In three to four sentences, reconstruct the arc of chapter three from the Cunningham lunch to the sealed pact on the porch, treating the chapter as a lesson in civic education rather than a series of domestic scenes.

Discussion Questions

1. Calpurnia's kitchen lecture — 'Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin' on their ways' — functions as the moral premise of Atticus's porch lecture later in the chapter. Argue how Harper Lee uses the structural parallel between kitchen and porch to define what the Finch household means by 'home.'
2. Atticus's single maxim — 'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it' — is delivered between two failures of understanding: Scout's contempt for Miss Caroline and Scout's pity for Walter. Defend or challenge the claim that Lee deliberately frames the novel's ethical thesis in a moment when Scout is almost certainly incapable of practicing it.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide