 |
|
To
kill a Mockingbird Summary: Chapter 2
|
Time has passed and it's now September. Dill has returned to his family in
Meridian, and Scout goes to school for the first time. She is excited about
the prospect of starting school at last, but her first day of first grade leaves
her feeling quite differently. Her teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher, is a 21-year-old
teacher new to the Maycomb County schools - she herself is from the richer and
more cultured North Alabama, and she doesn't understand the ways of Maycomb
yet.
Miss Caroline reads a saccharine children's story about cats which leaves the
children feeling restless: as Scout says, "Miss Caroline seemed unaware
that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first graders were immune
to imaginative literature."
Half of them had failed first grade the year before. So when Miss Caroline puts
the alphabet on the board and asks the class if they know it, and Scout reads
it through, then reads from her reader and from the local paper, Miss Caroline
forbids Scout to let Atticus teach her to read anymore, as she claims that Scout
is learning wrongly. Scout doesn't remember learning how to read; it seems she
always knew how; it was "something that just came to me." When Miss
Caroline forbids her to continue reading, she realizes how important it is to
her: "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not
love breathing."
Jem tries to reassure Scout at recess, telling her that Miss Caroline is introducing
a new teaching technique which he calls the Dewey Decimal System. Back in school,
Scout gets bored and starts writing a letter to Dill, but is criticized again
by her teacher for knowing how to write in script when she's only supposed to
print in first grade. Scout blames Calpurnia for teaching her how to write in
script on rainy days.
Lunchtime comes around and Miss Caroline asks everyone who isn't going home
to eat to show her their lunch pails. One boy, Walter Cunningham, has no pail
and refuses to accept Miss Caroline's loan of a quarter to buy something with.
Miss Caroline doesn't understand, and a classmate asks Scout to help out. Scout
explains that Walter is a Cunningham, but Miss Caroline doesn't know what that
means. Scout says that the Cunninghams don't accept other people's help, they
just try to get by with what little they have. Scout mentally recollects how
Mr. Cunningham, when entailed, repaid Atticus for his legal services by giving
the Finches hickory nuts, stovewood, and other farm produce. The Cunninghams
are farmers who don't have actual money now that the Depression is on. Many
professionals in the town charge their country clients in farm produce rather
than monetary currency. When Scout explains that Walter can't pay back the lunch
money Miss Caroline offered, the teacher taps Scout's hand with a ruler and
makes her stand in the corner of the room. Scout and the children are puzzled
by this very unthreatening form of "whipping," and the entire class
laughs until a locally-born sixth grade teacher arrives and announces that she'll
"burn up everybody" in the room if they aren't quiet.
The first half of the day ends and Scout sees Miss Caroline bury her head in
her arms as the children leave the room, but she doesn't feel sorry for her
after her unfriendly treatment that morning.
Analysis
The description of Scout's first day in this chapter and the next allows Lee
to provide a context for the events to follow by introducing some of the people
and families of Maycomb County. By introducing Miss Caroline, who is like a
foreigner in the school, to some of Maycomb's ways, Lee also reveals Maycomb
culture to the reader. Maycomb county children are portrayed as a mainly poor,
uneducated, rough, rural group ("most of them had chopped cotton and fed
hogs from the time they were able to walk"), in contrast with Miss Caroline,
who wears makeup and "looked and smelled like a peppermint drop."
The chapter helps show that a certain amount of ignorance prevails in Maycomb
County. The school system, as represented by Miss Caroline, is well-intentioned,
but also somewhat powerless to make a dent in patterns of behavior which are
deeply ingrained in the social fabric.
As seen in the first chapter, where a person's individual identity is greatly
influenced by their family and its history, this chapter again shows that in
Maycomb a child's behavior can be explained simply by his family's last name,
as when Scout explains to her teacher "he's a Cunningham." Atticus
says that Mr. Cunningham "came from a set breed of men," which suggests
that the entire Cunningham line shares the same values. In this case, they have
pride: they do not like to take money they can't pay back, and they continue
to live off the land in poverty rather than work for the government (in the
WPA, FDR's Work Projects Administration). Thus, in Maycomb County, people belong
to familial "breeds," which can determine a member's disposition or
temperament. All the other children in the class understand this: growing up
in this setting teaches children that people can behave a certain way simply
because of the family or group that they come from.
The chapter also establishes that Scout is a very intelligent and precocious
child who learned how to read through her natural instinct, sitting on Atticus's
lap and following along in his book. She doesn't understand that she loves to
read until her teacher tells her she can't read anymore: this shows that reading
was a pleasure and a freedom she had taken for granted all her life until it
is denied to her. The value of some freedoms can't be fully understood until
a person is forced to part from them. Similarly, Scout and Jem will learn the
full importance of justice later in the book through the trial of Tom Robinson,
where justice is withheld and denied to a black man. The implication is that
young people intrinsically expect certain human freedoms and have a natural
sense for freedom and justice which they only become aware of when the adults
in society begin trying to take such freedoms away. Though Scout is young and
impressionable, she becomes a spokesperson for her entire class, interacting
with the adult teacher comfortably; this shows that though a child, she is more
grown-up than some of her peers.
The chapter also shows how much Scout looks to Jem for support and wisdom. He
is often wrong in his advice: he thinks that entailment is "having your
tail in a crack," when it actually has to do with the way property is inherited,
and he calls the new reading technique the "Dewey Decimal System"
because he is confusing the library catalogue with the new educational theories
of John Dewey. However, he gives his little sister support when she needs it
even though he warns her not to tag along with him and his fifth-grade friends
at school.
