Kelso High School
English Department
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen & Fifteen – Plot
Summary
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Structure
Plot Summary / Key Incidents
Narrative Technique
Characterisation – Jem
Characterisation – Atticus
Theme - Prejudice and Intolerance
Theme – Courage
Theme – Growing Up
Theme - Innocence
Structure
• Novel divided into TWO parts.
• Part One shows the three children – Jem, Scout
and Dill learning lessons about life and people.
• Childish innocence of Part One is described over
a long period of school years.
• Part Two deals with the lead up to the trial, the
trial itself and the aftermath.
• Part Two deals with a far shorter and specific
time – maybe suggesting that the trial was the
most important event of their childhood.
Plot Summary / Key Incidents
• Chapters 12-15 Summer 1935
• Calpurnia takes Jem & Scout to her church
• Aunt Alexandra arrives
• Dill returns to Maycomb
• A lynch mob tries to take Tom from the jail
• Scout talks to Mr Cunningham
Narrative
• The use of the child’s perspective
as the narrator in Chapter 15
increases the tension in the story
as we (the readers) understand
the danger that Atticus is in, but
Scout does not.
Characterisation – Jem
• At the end of Part One Jem is still a young boy
who “buried his face in Atticus’s shirt’
• In Part Two Jem is growing up and Scout finds it
hard to accept the changes in him.
• He makes clear to Scout that he does not want
their relationship to continue as before
Homework Task: Quotation (Chapter 12)
• He is beginning to understand things from an
adult’s point of view
Homework Task : Quotation (Chapter 14)
Characterisation - Atticus
• Atticus sometimes acts as a bridge between the
black and white communities – he is chosen to
defend Tom Robinson and both he and Scout
manage to control the mob outside the jail and
prevent them from harming Tom Robinson. A
man who was less respected and valued would
have been unable to do this, especially without
violence.
Theme: Prejudice and Intolerance
• In Chapter 12 Jem and Scout are made to feel unwelcome by
Lulu in the coloured church because they are white
Homework Task: Quotation (Chapter 12)
• By showing the rest of the congregation as welcoming, Lee
emphasises the goodness of the black community and this
makes the racism of the white community even more
emphasised.
• Calpurnia has had to teach her children to read and write
because education is SEGREGATED and there is no school for
black people in Maycomb. The fact that she cannot speak
“White” in church illustrates another division between blacks
and whites.
Theme: Prejudice and
Intolerance
• Because of their racial prejudice, the townspeople are prepared to
accept the word of cruel, ignorant Bob Ewell over that of a decent
black man.
• As soon as word gets out that Atticus will defend Tom the comments
start:
“ We would… sometimes hear ‘There’s his chillun’ or
‘Yonder’s some Finches’”
• The fact that Tom Robinson is black means he is not thought worthy
of a fair trial by many of the Maycomb inhabitants. This is why the
lynching party descends on the jail.
Theme – Courage
• Atticus waiting at the jail for the lynch mob in order to protect
Tom from the threat of mob violence is a sign of his courage.
Task – Explain why.
• Jem refusing to leave Atticus to go home is another example
of courage.
Theme – Growing Up
• The children learn that Calpurnia leads a double life
so she is able to fit into both the black community
and the world of the Finch house. She explains that
churchgoers would think she was “puttin’ on airs fit
to beat Moses” if she spoke “white” in church.
• The reappearance of Dill offers Scout a chance to
flee back into the comforts of childhood.
• Dill’s return emphasises the growing distance
between Jem and Scout. By telling Atticus about Dill,
Scout says that Jem “rose and broke the remaining
code of our childhood”. This is an act of betrayal to
Scout, but an act of responsibility from Jem.
Theme – Growing Up
• Part One was dominated by fun and games with
Dill, but Part Two focuses on the adult world of
the trial.
• The incident at the jail symbolises Jem’s
transition from boy to man. He stands by Atticus
and refuses to go home, “since only a child
would do so”.
Theme - Innocence
• Confrontation at the jail is dominated by Scout’s innocence in
that she can still chat with Mr Cunningham about his son
despite being surrounded by the mob.
• She doesn’t understand what’s going on or why the men are
angry. She starts talking to Mr Cunningham because she
thinks it’s the polite thing to do. Her actions make the men
feel ashamed. She’s so innocent and polite that the men
realise that what they are doing is wrong and leave without
hurting anyone.
• Atticus says later that events prove that “a gang of wild
animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human”.
Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen– Success
Criteria
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Structure
Plot Summary / Key Incidents
Narrative Technique
Characterisation – Jem
Characterisation – Atticus
Theme - Prejudice and Intolerance
Theme – Courage
Theme – Growing Up
Theme - Innocence
Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and
Fifteen Analysis
The End!!