To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 3

Narration Prompt

Summarize chapter three in three or four sentences for a reading group that has already finished the novel. Attend less to plot than to the chapter's function as the novel's compressed civics lesson.

Discussion Questions

1. Calpurnia, Atticus, and Scout constitute a three-voice instruction in chapter three: the kitchen (Calpurnia on hospitality), the porch (Atticus on empathy), and the pact (Scout assenting to both). Harper Lee could have placed any of these scenes in another chapter and still made them count. What does the author achieve by concentrating all three in a single chapter that runs from one noon dinner to one bedtime bargain?
2. Atticus explains the Ewell exemption with phrasing — 'exclusive society,' 'judiciously allowed,' 'certain privileges,' 'bend the law a little in special cases' — that is all drawn from the vocabulary of legitimate institutions. Consider the moral weight of Lee's decision to let her most admirable character voice the town's most indefensible compromise in that register. Does the chapter endorse Atticus's formulation, expose it, or both? Evidence is required.

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