To Kill a Mockingbird Characters

The solicitor, a Mr. Gilmer, was not well known to us.

Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate got out.

“Scout yonder’s
been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet.

John Taylor was kind enough to give us a postponement…”
“If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why are you doin’ it?”

She
stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk.

“I’m simply defending a Negro—his name’s Tom Robinson.

So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a
neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch.

He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon
in Tom Swift.

He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch.

She
stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk.

Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called.

Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office,
walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs.
Henry Lafayette Dubose.

If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch
would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

Aunt Alexandra got up from the table and swiftly passed more refreshments,
neatly engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates in brisk conversation.

Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose
father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had
done his best to live down.

A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut
across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked.

If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no
further trouble.

When his turn came, he went to the
front of the room and began, “Old Hitler—”
“Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates.

Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine.

A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling
tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken
Coca-Cola bottles.

Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in
the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar.

If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch
would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.

“Tell it to us,” he said.

Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated;
although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their
initial suspicions.

“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said.

“That’s old Tim Johnson, ain’t it?”

She left the room and returned with a purple-covered book on
which Meditations of Joshua S. St. Clair was stamped in gold.

I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson.

When his turn came, he went to the
front of the room and began, “Old Hitler—”
“Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss Gates.

“Look at all those folks—you’d think William Jennings Bryan was
speakin‘.”

“Tell you, Atticus,” Cousin
Ike would say, “the Missouri Compromise was what licked us, but if I had to go
through it agin I’d walk every step of the way there an‘ every step back jist like I
did before an’ furthermore we’d whip ‘em this time… now in 1864, when
Stonewall Jackson came around by—I beg your pardon, young folks.

He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon
in Tom Swift.

“…Robert E. Lee Ewell!”

“You sound like Cousin Ike Finch,” I said.

It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”

The fact that Aunty
was a good cook was some compensation for being forced to spend a religious
holiday with Francis Hancock.

Cousin Ike Finch was Maycomb
County’s sole surviving Confederate veteran.