To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 30

About This Passage

This is the very end of the chapter. Scout has just told Atticus that telling people about Boo Radley would be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird. Atticus puts his face in Scout's hair. When he gets up, his step is young again, even though he had been so tired. He walks across the porch into the shadows. Before he goes inside the house, he stops in front of Boo Radley and says, "Thank you for my children, Arthur." The whole chapter has been a quiet argument between Atticus and Mr. Tate about what to tell the town, and the chapter ends with Atticus saying thank you to the man the argument has been about.

Narration Prompt

Tell what Atticus and Mr. Tate talk about on the porch, what Mr. Tate decides about how Bob Ewell died, and what Atticus says to Boo Radley before going inside the house.

Discussion Questions

1. What in the story shows that Mr. Heck Tate wanted to protect Boo Radley when he said taking the one man who had done the town a great service and dragging him with his shy ways into the limelight would be a sin?
2. How do you know that Atticus believed Mr. Tate's story about Bob Ewell falling on his own knife when Mr. Tate showed exactly how it had happened with the switchblade in his hand?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide