To Kill a Mockingbird

When school starts, Scout and Jem pass the Radley house each day. Scout continues to wish she could see Boo, but her longing now contains more mature undertones. She wants to see Boo and greet him as friendly neighbor. 

Scout’s third-grade teacher, Miss Gates, requires the students to give weekly current-events presentations. During one of these presentations, Cecil Jacobs delivers a series of naive reflections on Adolf Hitler’s internment of Jewish people. Miss Gates then rails against the dictatorship in Germany, saying America is different because it is a democracy.

After school, Scout approaches Jem, confused by Miss Gates’ hypocritical hatred of Hitler. She recalls how Miss Gates emerged from the courthouse after the Tom Robinson trial, saying, “it’s time someone taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us” (283). Jem is enraged that Scout has brought up the trial. He orders her never to talk about it again. 

By the middle of October, life in Maycomb appears to have calmed down. Bob Ewell gets a WPA job, which he promptly loses, blaming his termination on Atticus. Shortly thereafter, Link Deas gives Helen Robinson a job. Bob Ewell harasses her each day when she passes his house until Deas learns of his harassment. He confronts Bob Ewell, and ultimately, the harassment ceases. Following his harassment of Helen, Judge Taylor sees Ewell prowling around his house.

That Halloween, the school stages a pageant wherein all of the children perform the roles of Maycomb’s agricultural products. Scout is assigned the role of pork, and she wears a ham costume lined in wire mesh. Still mentally exhausted by the events of the year, no one from family (except for Jem) comes to pageant. Jem and Scout walk home together after the pageant, beginning—as Scout ominously phrases it—their “longest journey together” (291).

Scout is so embarrassed after the pageant that she keeps her ham costume on to hide underneath it. Walking together through the dark woods, she and Jem both hear a noise. They attribute their fear, however, to Halloween jitters.

They have almost reached the main road when Mr. Ewell attacks them, breathing heavily and smelling of stale whiskey. In her ungainly costume, Scout loses her balance and tumbles over. She feels something tearing at the mesh of her costume, then hears a physical struggle as she is suddenly pulled away from her attacker.

Eventually, the sounds of struggling cease, and Scout emerges from her costume. She blearily wanders home, noticing a man through the lamplight. She sees the man carry Jem back to the house.

When Scout arrives home, Dr. Reynolds is tending to Jem in his bedroom. He says that Jem has a broken arm but is otherwise fine. Sheriff Heck Tate comes to the house and reveals that he found Bob Ewell under a tree with a knife stuck under his ribs. Tate declares that Bob Ewell is dead.