Saturday, March 22, 2008

Chapters 11 - 15

Chapter #11
What request does Mrs. Dubose make of Jem? Is this a fair punishment for his “crime”?

Chapter #12
Explain why Calpurnia speaks differently in the Finch household, and among her neighbours at church.

Chapter #13
Comment on Aunt Alexandra's ideas about breeding and family. Why does Atticus tell them to forget it? Who is right, do you think?

Chapter #14
Why does Alexandra think Atticus should dismiss Calpurnia? How does Atticus respond to the suggestion?

Chapter #15
What persuades the lynching-party to give up their attempt on Tom's life?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

CH 11:
Mrs. Dubose requests that Jem reads to her every day. I think the request is reasonable seeing as he destroyed her garden out of revenge.

ONE9077 said...

John,

It does seem like a fairly reasonable request, but I have to put myself into Jem's shoes for a minute. I'm not sure that I would have reacted much better when I was his age if someone had said something so awful about my father. How do you think you would have reacted if Mrs. Dubose said something horrible about a person that you cared a great deal for?

Anonymous said...

CH 15:
Scout persuades the mob to go home without even trying to. She causes Mr. Cunningham to step in Atticus' shoes. This is significant because a theme in the novel is that you never know someone until you walk in his shoes. When Mr. Cunninghamdid that, he realized who was right and backed away. Later, in chapter 16, Atticus acknowledges what Scout did and how she did it.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 12: Calpurnia understands that no one wants to feel inferior to someone else and if she speaks grammatically correctly, the other African Americans will interpret it as Calpurnia trying to be better than them appear to be someone she isn’t. Calpurnia speaks correctly around white people so they don’t think less of her for seeming uneducated. Calpurnia is putting aside her pride and conforming in order to make the people around her most at ease.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 14: Aunt Alexandra tries to convince Atticus that she can do the work that Calpurnia does, therefore making Calpurnia useless around the house. However, Alexandra also says that Scout is growing up is a reason to fire Calpurnia, implying that Cal is interfering with that. Atticus tells Alexandra that Calpurnia is not only a servant, but a great help to the family and a very good mother to the children, and of course, Scout and Jem love her.

Anonymous said...

Alexandra thinks Atticus should dismiss calpurnia because now that alexandra is there she thicks that they dont need her to do work or serve them.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 15
Throughout the novel the theme “Don’t judge people until you have walked in their shoes is expressed.” Scout begins to talk to Walter Cunningham about his entailment and about his son. This makes Mr. Cunningham speechless and forces him to walk in Atticus’ shoes. He realizes that he should go home when he discovers Atticus is a man to and he also has children he cares for.

Anonymous said...

Calpurnia speaks with respect when talking to the Finch's. She uses correct grammer as a sign of that. With other African-Americans, she speaks as they do, so that her friends don't think that Cal thinks she is better than them.

Anonymous said...

Question #15:

Scout is able to persuade the lynching party to leave Tom Robinson and her father alone. She made the party stop, and realize that Atticus was just a man, who had children to be responsible for. Scout taught the men to stop and step into someone else’s shoes, one of the main themes of the novel.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 15
It is Scout who inadvertently breaks up the small mob of men that had come to kill Tom Robinson. When Walter Cunningham saw Scout, he thought of his own children and he was forced to “stand in Atticus’ shoes”. After this, he could no longer harm Atticus or Tom Robinson.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 15
What persuades the lynching-party to give up their attempt on Tom’s life is that Scout made them walk in Atticus’s shoes. She was relating to Mr. Cunningham in the end of chapter 15 and that is what caused them to walk in Atticus’s shoes and realize how hard of a time Atticus was having.

ONE9077 said...

Many of you have responded to the question about the lynching party, and I would have to agree with all of you that Scout is able to break up the group without really even trying. I do believe that it is her innocence the leads Mr. Cunningham to ultimately give up and go home. Scout's simple words somehow makes him realize that what they all are about to do is wrong and that they should return home to their own families.

ONE9077 said...

I really enjoyed reading some of your insights into Calpurnia's character. I agree that Calpurnia probably doesn't want to be viewed as "high and mighty" when she is among her friends and relatives. I am sure that she thinks it is only proper to speak differently when she is working at the Finch household. Can you relate to how Calpurnia is feeling? Have you ever felt that you needed to speak and act in a different way when you were around a certain group of people?

Anonymous said...

Chapter 12

Calpurnia uses her skills of speaking correctly when it is most appropriate for her. When she is with the Finches, she speaks grammatically correct, since Atticus is a lawyer who speaks very sophisticatedly all of the time. When she is with her fellow African-Americans, she uses the slang that they use. She does not want to make them feel inferior or less intelligent than her.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 11

Mrs. Dubose requests that Jem read to her every day after school for a month. He received the punishment after he cut the heads of all of the flowers in Mrs. Dubose's flowers. This request is very reasonable, considering that a crime of that magnitude would result in a much deeper punishment if Jem had torn someone else's flowers. I think that Jem is lucky and he must relize that in order to be given a true perspective on Mrs. Dubose.


Chapter 15

During the night of the lynching-party, Scout, Jem, and Dill arrive. This eventually persuades the party to give up their attempt at ending the trial. Scout asks the members of the party to put themselves in Atticus's shoes. This simple task of innocence becomes enough to drive the lynching-party away. I wonder if Scout's innocence will effect something later in the book. It seems very likely to happen.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 12:
Calpurina speaks like the people that she is surrounded with in her two different enviroments. She realizes that speaking in one as she would another would be wrong. The Finches are white people who have been educated to speak a "properly", whereas and the african americans at the church have a different dialect. Calpurina understands that to speak as she would with the Finches at her church would be inappropriate, and vice-versa.

Anonymous said...

Chapter 14
Aunt Alexandra says that she wants to dismiss Calpurnia because they don’t need her anymore and because Alexandra could do all of her jobs. Aunt Alexandra also says that they should get rid of Calpurnia because “Scout is growing up” which implies that Calpurnia may be getting in the way of Scout’s development. Atticus of course, immediately dismisses his sister’s ideas, saying that Calpurnia has helped him for many years, that she is a member of their family, and that both Jem and Scout love her.

Anonymous said...

ch. 15
When the lynching party is attempting to kill Tom Robinson Atticus and Scout are able to make Mr. Cunningham stand in their shoes. Also in this moment of the novel Scout is able to bring Mr. Cunningham back to the realities of life by discussing how great of a boy his son is. What scout did is a clear example of how just having children around can make people think about their actions and realize what they are doing.

Anonymous said...

Ch.14

In this section of the novel Aunt Alexandra attempts to convince Atticus to dismiss Calpurnia due to Alexandra’s beliefs and opinions about black people in the community. This attempt to remove Calpurnia from the family corresponds with what most of Maycomb county’s citizens would do as well as the disease of racism that has spread among people’s thoughts. In this novel Atticus is presented to the reader as a character that is trustworthy and true to what he believes in. Therefore he proceeds in objecting with what Aunt Alexandra had proposed and states that “she is a family member

Anonymous said...

Chapter #11

Mrs. Dubose requests that Jem would read to her for a month. Jem’s destruction of all of her garden is a grand crime in Mrs. Dubose’s eyes but had she looked in his point of view to see what caused him to do this. Had she “walked in his shoes”; she may have noticed that she had done much to provoke this crime. As said later in the novel, Atticus would have sent Jem to Mrs. Dubose’s house anyway to help with her health. It turns out to be a nice coincidence for her that this event occurred because now Jem has a reason to go to Mrs. Dubose’s house as opposed to being forced to go for no reason.