To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 5

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 5 as an argument Lee is building. Identify the three scenes — Miss Maudie’s porch, the fishing-pole attempt at the Radley house, Atticus’s lecture — and describe the through-line that links them, including what Miss Maudie’s theology and Atticus’s cross-examination contribute to the same claim.

Discussion Questions

1. Miss Maudie’s “Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of — oh, of your father” is one of the novel’s earliest and sharpest religious statements. Is Lee’s critique aimed at a doctrine, a temperament, or a household? What would it take to decide between these readings, and does the chapter give you enough evidence?
2. Atticus’s accusation — “putting his life’s history on display for the edification of the neighborhood” — lands on the children, but the phrase implicates the reader of this novel and of much modern literature about vulnerable subjects. Is the novel’s own practice continuous with the Boo Radley game, or does it meet its own standard? Defend your position.

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