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To
kill a Mockingbird Summary: Chapter 6
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It is Dill's last night in Maycomb for the summer. Jem and Scout get permission
to go sit with him that evening. Dill wants to go for "a walk," but
it turns into something more: Jem and Dill want to sneak over to the Radleys'
and peek into one of their windows. Scout doesn't want them to do it, but Jem
accuses her of being girlish, an insult she can't bear, and she goes along with
it. They sneak under a wire fence and go through a gate. At the window, Scout
and Jem hoist Dill up to peek in the window. Dill sees nothing, only curtains
and a small faraway light. The boys want to try a back window instead, despite
Scout's pleas. As Jem is raising his head to look in, the shadow of a man appears
and crosses over him. As soon as it's gone, the three children run as fast as
they can back home, but Jem loses his pants in the gate. As they run, they hear
a shotgun sound somewhere behind them.
When they return, Mr. Radley is standing inside his gate, and Atticus is there
with various neighbors. They found out that Mr. Radley was shooting at a "white
Negro" in his backyard, and has another barrel waiting if he returns. Dill
makes up a story about playing strip poker to explain Jem's missing pants, and
Jem says it was with matches rather than cards, which would be considered very
bad. Dill says goodbye to them, and Jem and Scout go to bed.
Jem decides to go back and get his pants late that night. Scout tries to persuade
him that it would be better to get whipped by Atticus than to get shot and killed
by Mr. Radley, but Jem insists - he says he's never been whipped by Atticus
and doesn't want to be. Jem is gone for a little while, but he returns with
the pants, trembling.
Analysis
The children come ever closer to bridging the distance between themselves and
Boo. Scout is reluctant to participate in these games -something tells her it's
not a good idea, but she can't stand to be left out, especially on charges of
being too "girlish." As time goes by, Scout will learn why Boo likes
his privacy and will understand why it's important to leave him alone, but for
now she only has a suspicion of wrong.
The children's attempts to connect with Boo evoke, again, the sense that they,
as children, will be able to see Boo with more decency and sincerity than the
rest of the populace. Their search through the darkness, the many gates, the
vegetables in the yard, and then Dill's glance through the dark window with
curtains through which there is one small light are somewhat symbolic of the
children's search through layers of ignorance and rumor to find the truth underneath
it all, at the very core. By searching for the man who has been made into a
monster by society, they will bring back his basic common humanity and unites
him with everyone else in spite of his unusual personality. Likewise, Atticus
wants to make it possible for black people to exist on the same plane as whites,
no longer subjected to an inhuman, "heathen," existence. Color is
not insignificant here: Boo Radley is described as very, very white at the end
of the book, and Tom is described as being extremely "velvety" dark
- they are at opposite ends of the flesh color spectrum but both of these main
"mockingbird figures" share the common dilemma of being markedly different
from the flesh color that is considered to be the norm in Maycomb.
