To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 9

About This Passage

Selected for thematic weight (this is one of the novel's foundational philosophical statements — Atticus is articulating both the doctrine of respect for opposing opinions and the doctrine that conscience is exempt from majority rule, and the combination of these two positions is what makes his moral courage distinctively democratic rather than merely individualist), rhetorical sophistication (the passage builds a complex moral argument in three sentences, each of which qualifies and extends the previous one, culminating in the aphoristic 'the one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience' that compresses the entire position into a single memorable line), and instructional value for a senior writer learning the prose of moral argument under domestic constraint.

Narration Prompt

Give a concise summary, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole.

Discussion Questions

1. Atticus's claim that conscience does not 'abide by majority rule' is one of the novel's most consequential philosophical statements, and it raises fundamental questions about the relationship between individual moral judgment and democratic legitimacy. In its most extreme form, the claim could justify any individual's refusal to obey any law on grounds of personal conscience, which is the structure of arguments that have been used by both abolitionists and segregationists, by both pacifists and terrorists. Consider how Lee distinguishes between defensible and indefensible appeals to conscience-over-majority. What features of Atticus's position prevent it from collapsing into the indefensible version, and how does Lee's framing of the principle protect it from being co-opted by those whose 'conscience' would lead them in opposite directions?
2. Lee structures the chapter around three sources of pressure on Atticus's decision: the schoolyard cruelty of Cecil Jacobs, the conventional family pressure of Aunt Alexandra, and the cousin-on-cousin cruelty of Francis. Consider Lee's compositional choice to place all three pressures in a single chapter that also contains Atticus's most explicit philosophical statement of his moral position. What is she suggesting about the multiple fronts on which moral courage must be sustained, and how does the chapter's pacing — moving between high-minded principle and low-down cruelty — create a specific kind of pressure on the reader?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide