NICOLE wcta's List: To Kill A Mockingbird

• I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
  

  • Atticus does not believe in guns and killing living things despite the fact that he used to be the deadliest shot in Maycomb County.
• So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.  Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16, spoken by the character Atticus

  • The "gang of wild animals" was a group of Cunninghams. They went to the jail to do something to Tom Robinson. They were probably going to beat up Atticus as well. Scout begins talking to Mr. Cunningham and eventually brings him to his senses.
• "I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill.  "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."  "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem.  "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them."  "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown.  I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22
  

  • Dill has always been a unique character.
• The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.  As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus
  

  • ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!!!!!
• I think there's just one kind of folks.  Folks.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Scout
   
  

  • Scout has the right idea here. People should not be classified by their ethnicities, gender, or education. People are just people.
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   When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.  But don't make a production of it.  Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus

  • Spoken to Uncle Jack. He tried to dance around a question asked by Scout. He didn't realize how intelligent Scout really is. Most adults underestimate a child's intelligence. It's sad really. We're smarter than we look.
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   Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus

  • Scout had issues with her cussing.

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