To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 6

About This Passage

Selected for thematic weight (Jem's brief, halting explanation marks the first time he chooses concealment over honesty with his father, and the choice represents a small but irreversible step into the moral complexity of growing up — there are now things he knows that Atticus does not, and that asymmetry is the beginning of his independent moral life), rhetorical sophistication (Lee compresses an entire developmental crisis into eight halting child-voice sentences, ending on the unfinishable 'He — he's just Atticus' that acknowledges the inadequacy of language to explain what Jem is feeling), and instructional value for a young writer learning the prose of authentic dialogue under emotional pressure.

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. Jem's decision to retrieve his pants in the middle of the night — risking both another shotgun blast and discovery by Atticus — is presented by Lee as a moment of moral seriousness rather than mere fear of punishment. Jem is willing to risk being shot rather than disappoint Atticus. Consider what this reveals about Jem's relationship to his father. Is Jem acting from love, from moral principle, or from a more complicated combination of admiration and the need to be the kind of son he believes Atticus wants? And what does Lee gain by making this small private decision — not the larger public events of the trial — the moment when Jem most clearly demonstrates his developing character?
2. Mr. Nathan Radley's casual claim that he fired at 'a Negro in his collard patch' is delivered as a single sentence and accepted without question by the gathered neighbors. Lee places this small detail in a chapter otherwise devoted to the children's adventure. Consider why she includes it. The detail is doing background work that the chapter does not announce: it is showing the reader, in a single line, the moral architecture of a community in which a respected white man can claim to have fired at a Black man and have the claim accepted as a reasonable explanation requiring no further inquiry. How does this small piece of background prepare the reader for the much larger questions about racial violence the trial chapters will eventually raise?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide