Dialectical Journal
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Pages:_______________
Date:__________________
To Kill a Mockingbird
Summary/Quotations
Comments and Questions:
We find in the opening two paragraphs that
the story begins as a flashback and is told from
the first-person point of view.
I like the dialogue among the children. I
think Lee does a wonderful depiction of the
vernacular of the South and the
conversations children have.
The opening pages are about the setting. It is
in the South, in Maycomb County, Alabama.
The narrator tells us about Atticus Finch, her
father, who is a lawyer. She describes his law
business and how he helped his younger
brother in medicine.
The town is then described as a “tired old
town” and the people in it move rather slowly.
“…recently been told that we have nothing to
fear but fear itself”(6).
We meet Calpurnia the cook. Learn that the
narrator is four years younger than her brother,
making her nine at the time of his broken arm
incident. Her mother died two years after her
birth.
Dill came to them in the summer when Jem
was nearly ten and the narrator was almost six.
He was visiting his Aunt Rachel.
We learn the narrator’s name, Scout that she
has been reading since she was born, and that
Dill is rather small for his seven years. We
also learn that Scout is a rather forward girl
when she questions Dill’s about his father.
Their summers consisted of a tree house and
putting together dramas on the porch.
We are introduced to the allure of the Radley
place and Boo Radley’s story. He was thirtythree years old at the time of the scissor
incident. We discover how the South thinks,
and how going against their way of thinking
makes you somewhat of an outsider.
We learn of Mr. Radley’s death.
We learn of the precociousness and orneriness
of the children when Jem and Dill make a dare
to each other about the Radley house.
I am in love with the audacity of Scout our
narrator. I wonder, though, about her
reliability as a narrator, as she is just a child,
and sometimes a child’s perspective of the
past can be distorted by nostalgia. I wonder
whether growing up without a mother has
affected her much, and what kind of father
Atticus is, especially by what Scout meant
when she said, “…treated us with a
courteous detachment” (6).
I’m curious to know why this is set in the
South. The story line will have to be
developed more obviously to figure this out,
but I’m sure it has something to do with
what is going to occur with Atticus being a
lawyer and all.
The Radley place and the allure of Boo
reminds me of going to my Granddad’s as a
young girl with my brothers and the stories
we came up with about the various people
that lived in the abandoned houses on his
land. We lived a through a thousand
adventures in our minds during the summer.
I also like the inclusion of the neighbors and
how Scout stereotypes some of the
characters. Miss Stephanie Crawford, who
is the town-know-it-all it seems.
The detail Lee uses to describe the various
scenes allows the reader to visualize the text
very easily.