Main Charcters
Who's Who in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
The first chapter of the novel is its exposition, where we meet the important characters and lean the setting. As you read the first chapter takes notes about the setting and each of the characters.
Maycomb, Alabama
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three­o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty­four hours long but seemed longer. 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. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town—
-hot
-southern town
-disheveled - "red slop when it
rains" "sagging courthouse"
-"tired old town"
-nowhere to go/nothing to do
-"people and time moved slowly"
Scout Finch
-6-yrs old
-mother died
when she
was 2
-story starts
when she is
6-yrs old
-likes to read
-creative and
imaginative
Jem Finch
Atticus Finch
Calpurnia
-broke his arm-13yrs old
-Scout and Jem's
father
-Finch's
cook
-loves football
-lawyer "reasonable
income"
-"all angles
and bones"
-Scout's brother - 4
years older
-emotional sometimes misses
his mother
-tries to brave
-related to
everyone in town
-reads to and
plays with his
kids
-leader
The Cunninghams
-helped brother go
to med school
-nearsighted
-disciplines
Scout
-substitute
mother
Dill
-7 yrs old
-small for his
age
Boo Radley
-"malevolent
phantom"
-likes to read
-peeps in windows
at night
-from
Mississippi
-freezs azaleas by
breathing on them
-spends
summers with
his aunt in
Alabama
-commits crimes at
night
-everyone is afraid
of him
-may not have a
-locked up by his
father
father
-fascinated by
the Radley place -stabbed his father
in the leg
-imagination
enormous group of troublemakers - part of the "gang" that Boo gets in trouble with
Mr. Radley -keeps to himself - religious but worships at home - no job - strict - thin, colorless eyes, sharp cheekbones
Miss Stephanie Crawford
neighborhood gossip
The Radley's House
The Radley Place is the home of Nathan Radley and his son Arthur "Boo" Radley. The house is portrayed as run down, old, and something of a haunted mansion. The character of Boo Radley adds another level to the idea of prejudice in the novel. The stories about Boo Radley fascinate the children and they spend most of the first half of the book trying to make him come out of his house. His story is a sad one but there is no proof that any of it happened, it's just hearsay and rumors, this teaches the children a lot about how people's thoughts sometimes differ from the truth.