 |
|
To
kill a Mockingbird Summary: Chapter 1
|
The chapter opens with the introduction of the narrator, Scout Finch, her older
brother Jem (Jeremy), and their friend and neighbor, Dill (Charles Baker Harris).
It quickly moves into an overview of Finch family history. Their ancestor, a
Methodist named Simon Finch, fled British persecution to eventually settle in
Alabama, where he trapped animals for fur and practiced medicine. Having bought
several slaves, he established a largely self-sufficient homestead and farm,
Finch's Landing, near Saint Stephens. The family lost its wealth in the Civil
War.
Scout's father, Atticus Finch, studied law in Montgomery while supporting his
brother, John "Jack" Hale Finch, who was in medical school in Boston.
Their sister Alexandra remained at Finch's Landing. Atticus began his law practice
in Maycomb, the county seat of Maycomb County, where his "office in the
courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard,
and an unsullied Code of Alabama." His first case entailed his defense
of two men who refused to plead guilty for second-degree murder. They instead
pleaded not guilty for first-degree murder, and were hanged, marking "probably
the beginning of my father's profound distaste for criminal law."
Scout then presents Depression-era Maycomb ("an old tired town when I first
knew it"), describing the summer heat and the slow pace of life ("There
was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy
it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County"). Her
father is described as "satisfactory," while her family's black cook,
Calpurnia, is strict and "tyrannical." Scout and Jem's mother died
of a heart attack when Scout was two and only Jem has occasional nostalgic memories
for her. The novel takes place in the summer when Scout is almost six and Jem
almost ten.
The real narrative begins with the first meeting between Scout, Jem, and "Dill",
a feisty, imaginative boy who is nearly seven but very small for his age ("I'm
little but I'm old"). From Meridian, Mississippi, Dill will be spending
the summer at the nearby house of Miss Rachel Haverford, his aunt. He impresses
the Finch children with his dramatic recounting of the movie Dracula, which
wins him their respect and friendship. The three engage in summertime play activities
of treehouse-improvement and acting out the plots of several of their favorite
books, with Dill proving to be "a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with
eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies."
By late summer, having exhausted these pursuits, the children turn their thoughts
toward the Radley place, a mysterious household on a curb beyond the Finch house
which is said to contain a "malevolent phantom" by the name of Boo
Radley. Though never seen by the children, he is rumored by popular superstition
to be over six feet tall, with rotten yellow teeth, popping eyes and a drool,
eating raw animals. He is often named as the source of strange evil.
Boo's story concerns the story of the unsociable Radley family, who disregarded
local custom by "keeping to themselves." Prior to his death, Mr. Radley
had only been seen on his daily trip to collect groceries from 11:30-12, and
the family worshipped in their own home on Sundays. Their youngest son, Arthur,
mixed with "the wrong crowd," a gang of boys who were finally arrested
and brought to court after driving an old car through the town square and locking
Maycomb's beadle in an outhouse. Though the other boys went to industrial school,
Arthur (a.k.a. Boo) Radley's family preferred to keep him hidden inside the
home. After fifteen years of this invisibility, it was claimed that the thirty-three-year-old
Boo had stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors. Refusing to permit
his son to be deemed insane or charged with criminal behavior, Mr. Radley allowed
Boo to be locked up in the courthouse basement ("the sheriff hadn't the
heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes"). Boo was eventually brought
back to the Radley home. After Mr. Radley's death, his older brother Nathan
arrived to continue keeping Boo inside and out of sight.
Dill develops an insatiable curiosity about Boo, and wants to lay eyes on this
strange "phantom," who is said to walk about at night looking in windows.
Dill dares Jem to go inside the boundary of the Radleys' front gate. After three
days of hedging, Jem's fear of Boo succumbs to his sense of honor when Dill
revises his terms, daring Jem to only touch the house. Jem finally agrees to
do this. He runs, touches the house, and the three scramble back to the Finches'
porch, where looking down the street to the Radley house "we thought we
saw an inside of a shutter move. Flick - and the house was still."
Analysis
The first chapter's emphasis on family history and stories within stories suggests
the rigid social ties that hold society together in the little town of Maycomb,
Alabama, and the inescapable links that tie an individual to his or her family
or clan. The book opens with a simple story about how Jem broke his arm at the
age of twelve, which will also, cyclically, conclude the book. From the outset,
the novel begins to concern itself with the question of "why did this particular
situation arise?" and seeks answers in historical origins. The children's
attempt to trace the main incident in the novel back to its roots leads them
to wonder whether it all began when Dill first arrived in Maycomb and became
their friend, or whether the real origins lie deeper in their ancestral history
and the chance events that brought the Finches to Maycomb. Their debate speaks
to deeper fundamental issues on the nature of human good and evil, and the old
"nature vs. nurture" debate. Dill, the new kid in town, represents
an outside, relatively new influence upon the children that affects them during
their own lifetimes, whereas the family history Scout recounts is a more inexorable
pattern which existed long before the children were born. Atticus tells them
that they are "both right," suggesting a more nuanced interpretation
of the patterns of history, family, identity, and temperament, which the book
will from now on set out to explore in more detail.
Scout narrates the book in the first person but in the past tense. Her voice
and viewpoint offer a glimpse of local events and personalities through the
lens of childhood, which may not always grasp the entire story. She often looks
up to Atticus, who always displays an upright, solidly moral response for his
reactions to events. However, the voice of Scout often assumes a mature tone
in which she writes from a more distant time, speaking of the town and its people
in the far-off past tense and offering explanations for outdated terms ("Mr.
Radley 'bought cotton,' a polite term for doing nothing"). This narrative
device allows the reader to understand more about some of the events that Scout
recounts than the young narrator is herself completely aware of.
The Radley house is described as being old, dark, closed-off, and uncivilized
in contrast to the rest of the neighborhood: once white, it is now a slate-gray
color, with rotten shingles, little sunlight, overgrown yards, and a closed
door on Sundays. The Radleys are also differentiated from the community by their
willful isolation from the usual patterns of social interaction, which causes
the town to ostracize them and unreasonably turn the mysterious Boo into a scapegoat
for any odd and unfortunate circumstances that occur. For instance, when various
domesticated animals are mutilated and killed, townspeople still suspect Boo
even after Crazy Addie is found guilty of this violence. This foreshadows the
town's treatment of Tom Robinson later in the book - they will find him guilty
despite rational evidence to the contrary.
Scout describes the Radleys' tendency to "keep to themselves" a "predilection
unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb's principle recreation,
but worshipped at home." Her choice of the word "recreation"
to describe church worship hints toward the townspeople's ethical hypocrisy,
especially in its close conjunction with the idea of forgiveness, a major Christian
virtue. Going to church may not guarantee that people will uphold the virtues
of Christianity when worship is reduced to a social event and the laws of society
have more bearing upon what is "forgivable" than the laws of the church.
This idea is fleshed out in more detail in Chapter 24, in which women from Maycomb's
Missionary Society display equal doses of religious "morality" and
outright racist bigotry.
Boo is to the children only what they have heard from popular legend, and interpreted
in their own imaginations. Scout's retelling of Jem's description of Boo shows
how her young mind could not yet distinguish between fact and fiction. Jem explains
that Boo "dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why
his hands were blood-stained - if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash
the blood off." The children's acceptance of such superstitions as the
permanence of raw animal blood shows that they are equally susceptible to accepting
the local gossip about the mysterious Boo, as evidenced by Scout's evaluation
of Jem's description as "reasonable."
The childish perspective, however easily misled, is also shown in this chapter
to probe closer toward truth than the adults are capable of. Dill's comment,
"I'm little but I'm old," explains why his height seems disproportionate
to his maturity, but also symbolically suggests that "little" people
may have a wiser grasp on events than their elders. The physical representation
of this facet of childhood is represented in Jem's daring rush into the Radleys'
yard, in which he enters a space that has been fundamentally condemned by the
entire town. The journey of this one individual against the mores of the entire
group, though performed here in fear and on a dare, symbolically speaks toward
the events that will follow when Atticus defends Tom Robinson in court and Scout
breaks up the mob of townspeople. Dill tries to persuade the other two to "make
him [Boo] come out" because "I'd like to see what he looks like."
His desire for this "seeing" has symbolic relevance to the idea that
children, who are as yet still somewhat innocent and uninfluenced by their society,
have a desire to see things more truly than adults, and can be capable of seeing
through adult biases, prejudices, and false accusations.
