To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 5

About This Passage

This passage is the chapter’s quiet turning point: Scout’s first explicit act of private theological reasoning. It practices adult diction (“confidence in pulpit Gospel,” “Protestant hells”), a balanced concessive clause (“True enough... But while...”), and an ironic antithesis between Miss Stephanie’s public virtue and Miss Maudie’s acid wit.

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 5 in a paragraph. Include Scout’s growing friendship with Miss Maudie, the porch conversation about Arthur Radley, the fishing-pole note, and Atticus’s lecture — and indicate how Lee braids the three scenes together as a single argument.

Discussion Questions

1. Lee sets Miss Maudie’s account of Arthur Radley in direct collision with Miss Stephanie Crawford’s: “that is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford.” What theory of rumor is Miss Maudie advancing, and how does Lee use Miss Maudie to critique Maycomb’s epistemology without ever letting her deliver a set-piece speech?
2. Evaluate Miss Maudie’s dictum that “sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of — oh, of your father.” Is this a rejection of religion, a refinement of it, or a specific diagnosis of the Radley household? Defend your reading from the passage and from what we already know about Atticus.

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide