To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 5

About This Passage

Selected for rhetorical sophistication (Miss Maudie's deflating response is a small masterpiece of the satirical quip — she answers a piece of malicious gossip with a question whose absurdity exposes the gossip's impossibility, and she does it without raising her voice), thematic weight (the chapter is about the difference between people who tell stories about Boo and people who actually remember him, and Miss Maudie's wit is the chapter's most efficient weapon against the storytellers), and instructional value for a young writer learning the prose of the comic put-down.

Narration Prompt

Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?

Discussion Questions

1. Miss Maudie is the first adult in the novel who treats Boo Radley as a person whose history can be remembered rather than as a mythology that can only be told. She offers Scout a specific memory ('he always spoke nicely to me, no matter what folks said he did') and a specific theory of his confinement (his father's strict religion poisoned the household). Consider what this combination — memory plus theory — accomplishes that either alone could not. Why does Miss Maudie's small piece of personal evidence carry more weight than Atticus's calm general observations about the Ewells in Chapter 3, and what does this tell us about the kinds of testimony that actually change minds?
2. Lee delivers Miss Maudie's most explosive line — 'Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of — oh, of your father' — almost as an aside, with a small joke about Atticus tucked into the middle. The line is one of the novel's boldest pieces of religious criticism, and Lee manages it with extraordinary tonal control: it is delivered as a casual observation rather than a sermon. Consider why Lee chooses this casual register for such serious content. What does she gain by letting the criticism land lightly, and what would change if Miss Maudie had delivered the same insight in a more solemn voice?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide