11 English
To Kill a Mockingbird
Task: Analyse how the description of setting communicates ideas related to themes, issues and/or characters.
Excerpt from novel
1. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at
night; he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite
and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from
the Radley chicken yard tall pecan trees shook
their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay
untouched by the children: Radley pecans would
kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a
lost ball and no questions asked. (1;9)
2. An oppressive odour met us when we crossed
the threshold, an odour I had met many times in
rain-rotted grey houses where there are coal-oil
lamps, water dippers and unbleached domestic
sheets. It always made me afraid, expectant,
watchful. (11; 117)
3. The churchyard was brick-hard clay, as was the
cemetery beside it. If someone died during a dry
spell, the body was covered with chunks of ice until
rain softened the earth. A few graves in the
cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones;
newer ones were outlined with brightly coloured
glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightening
rods guarding some graves denoted dead who
rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out candles
stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy
cemetery. (12;130)
4. The Maycomb jail was the most venerable and
hideous of the county’s buildings. Atticus said it
was like something Cousin Joshua St Clair might
have designed. It was certainly someone’s dream.
Starkly out of place in a town of square-faced
stores and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb jail
was a miniature Gothic joke one cell wide and two
What this description suggests about themes, issues and characters in the novel
Setting
cells high, complete with tiny battlements and flying
buttresses. Its fantasy was heightened by its red
brick façade and the thick steel bars at its
ecclesiastical windows. It stood on no lonely hill,
but was wedged between Tyndal’s Hardware Store
and the Maycomb Tribune office. The jail was
Maycomb’s only conversation piece; its detractors
said it looked like a Victorian privy; its supporters
said it gave the town a good solid respectable look,
and no stranger would ever suspect that it was full
of niggers. (15; 165)
5. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the
courtroom was exactly the same as a cold
February morning, when the mockingbirds were
still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on
Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in
the neighbourhood was shut as tight as the doors
of the Radley Place. A deserted, waiting, empty
street and the courtroom was packed with people.
A steaming summer night was no different from a
winter morning. […]. I expected Mr Tate to say any
minute, "Take him, Mr Finch...." (21;232)