TKAM Themes

Question 1

Courage

Answer 1

• moral courage (Mrs dubose and the was atticus delt with her) (Tom’s case)
• physical (Nathan Radley) (scout Who attacks Cecil Jacobs and Frances for criticising her father and water Cunningham forgetting her in trouble)
• masculine (Heck Tate) (Atticus “deadest shot”)

Quotes:
“courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what”
“Shot at a negro”
“his belt had a row of bullet holes sticking in it”
Atticus tells scout to “Fight with your head”

Question 2

Theme of Tolerance/empathy

Answer 2

• bob Ewell (“see if you can stand in Bob Ewells shoes for minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial”)
• Walter Cunningham (“you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute and that was enough”)
• scout and Boo at the end of the novel (“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough”
• end of the novel “nice”

Question 3

The importance of family/parent hood

Answer 3

• The difference between Atticus and aunt Alexandra’s parenting ( “run wild”)
• Dill being passed around
• bob Ewell
• Dolphus Raymond’s unconventional family

Question 4

Racism

Answer 4

• verdict of the trail (how the Ewell’s are placed above the Blacks, “if he scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white”)
• First purchase Church (“same God ain’t it” the black community are idealised as supportive of each other and in harmony with each other apart from Lula)
• Tom “felt sorry for” Mayella
• “in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus has no case”
• Dolphus Raymond

Question 5

Maycomb society

Answer 5

• tried and Lethargic (“courthouse sagged” people “moved slowly” “ambled” going to church was “Maycomb’s principal recreation”)
• judgemental (people defined and labelled by their surnames, Boo)
• racism (“Maycomb disease”)

Question 6

Class distinctions- black people

Answer 6

• black people
• unity “solid mass of coloured people”, - trial “evil assumption”,
• Ewells
• “shadow of a beginning” mr Underwoods editorial in the newspaper about the “senseless slaughter“ when he didn’t even used to like negroes)

Question 7

Class distinctions- white people

Answer 7

• Ewells “the playhouse of an insane child”
• scout cannot play with walter “because-he-is-trash” (punctuation shows that she says this firmly with finality but scout is extremely offended by such blatant prejudice and sobs in fury)
• Atticus perceives the word “trash“ to be about your character and not your class( whenever a white man abuses a black man “ no matter how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash” “mockingbird”
• when Scout ridicules water Cunningham at the dinner table for pouring syrup on his food “just a Cunningham“ and “not company“

Question 8

Injustice/ law

Answer 8

• sagging courthouse
• prejudice is in men’s hearts
• police force of children
• the trial is a spectacle ( Stephanie Crawford “wore a hat and gloves” and a “wagonload” of people went, courthouse was covered with “picnic parties“)
• not for Miss Maudie “poor devil”
• shadow of a beginning in the trial ( Judge Taylor had deliberately named Atticus to represent Tom as he knew do it properly, one of the Cunninghams on the Jury tried to get Tom acquitted, Atticus noticed that Judge Taylor didn’t believe Bob Ewell and “made him look like a fool”
• Hitlers persecution of Jews

Question 9

Loss of innocence

Answer 9

• Dill
• scout
• The novel is written as a Bildungsroman, coming of age story, and focuses on the transition from childhood to increasing experience of the adult world
• trial
• “folks”
• “so far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process”
• At the end of the novel when Scout applies Atticus’ moral message by standing on boo radleys porch

Question 10

Hypocrisy

Answer 10

• “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets”
• Stephanie Crawford “quivering with curiosity”
• The Christian women claim to be doing important missionary work, but neglect the suffering of the neighbours. They dismiss Helen Robinson is poverty and just missed her using reductive terms: “that doorkeys wife”. They are “filled with tears” when they reflect on abstract suffering of people in other countries
• hitler “over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody”
• Lula and “it’s the same god ain’t it”