To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

If the remainder of the school year were as fraught with drama as the first day, perhaps it would be mildly entertaining, but the prospect of spending nine months refraining from reading and writing made me think of running away.

ran along, wondering what had come over her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been too hard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry and too stubborn to say so. I was weary from the day’s crimes.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view –’ ‘Sir?’ ‘– until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’

We could not expect her to learn all Maycomb’s ways in one day, and we could not hold her responsible when she knew no better.

When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always made me expect something. ‘Do you know what a compromise is?’ he asked. ‘Bending the law?’ ‘No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions.

Our first days of freedom, and we were tired. I wondered what the summer would bring.

was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.

The second grade was grim, but Jem assured me that the older I got the better school would be, that he started off the same way, and it was not until one reached the sixth grade that one learned anything of value.

Mr Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbours and discomfort to ourselves.

‘The world’s endin’, Atticus! Please do something –!’ I dragged him to the window and pointed. ‘No it’s not,’ he said. ‘It’s snowing.’

‘No, it ain’t, it’s so cold it burns. Now don’t eat it, Scout, you’re wasting it. Let it come down.’

‘Jem, I ain’t ever heard of a nigger snowman,’ I said.

‘Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin’ that way, why do you send me to school?’ My father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes.

Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?’ I said not particularly.

‘That’s nice,’ I lied.

I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently on edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn’t mind me much the way I was.

But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.

It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs Dubose get you down.

With him, life was routine, without him, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days.

– I can remember back just a few years more’n he can, so I’m not much older, when you take off the fact that men can’t remember as well as women.’

‘For a while’ in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years. Jem and I exchanged glances.

I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.

When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning.

I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind the Mobile Register, the Birmingham News and the Montgomery Advertiser.

Atticus placed his fork beside his knife and pushed his plate aside. ‘Mr Cunningham’s basically a good man,’ he said, ‘he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.’

‘That’s what I thought, too,’ he said at last, ‘when I was your age. If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time … it’s because he wants to stay inside.’

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt Alexandra called being ‘spoiled’.

when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things … Atticus, he was real nice …’ His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. ‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’