Why Did Jem Have to Read to Mrs. Dubose
Advisor: Lucinda MacKethan, Emerita Professor of English, North Carolina Land University, National Humanities Center Fellow
©2014 National Humanities Center
Warning: This lesson includes language inside the text cogitating of the time in which the text was written. This language is now considered offensive.
In To Impale a Mockingbird what does Atticus Finch'south relationship with the minor but important character Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose propose about the quality of his moral vision?
Agreement
In To Kill a Mockingbird Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose embodies and gives public vocalisation to the values and attitudes of the Old Due south. The style the novel's protagonist Atticus Finch responds to her suggests that he lacks the critical perspective needed to acknowledge the depth and pervasiveness of his community's racism.
Text
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, chapter xi.
Text Type
Fiction
Text Complexity
Grades 11-CCR complexity ring.
For more information on text complexity see these resource from achievethecore.org.
Click hither for standards and skills for this lesson.
Ten
Common Core Land Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RI.nine-ten.three (Analyze how the author unfolds an assay or serial of ideas or events.)
- ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.iv (Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.)
Instructor's Note
(Page numbers refer to the 1982 Grand Central Publishing paperback edition.)
The publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2015 focused considerable attending on the moral vision of Atticus Finch. Readers who found him to exist an exemplar of tolerance and courage in To Kill a Mockingbird were shocked to hear him voice racist views in Watchman. How could the character who was and then aware in his original incarnation, set in the 1930s, become and then bigoted in his second coming, gear up in the 1950s? Readers and critics scrutinized Mockingbird to run across if the Atticus who dedicated Tom Robinson independent the seeds of the Atticus who twenty years later joined the Klan-like Citizens' Council. They might profitably have focused on chapter eleven, for there nosotros learn that Atticus suffers from a moral blind spot, which prevents him from fully acknowledging his community'south racism. Analyzing that affiliate, this lesson offers students the opportunity to develop a critical perspective on Atticus's judgment and character.
At the outset information technology is critical to emphasize how securely embedded Atticus is in Maycomb. "He liked Maycomb," the narrator tells usa early in the novel, "he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people; they knew him…. Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the boondocks." (p. half dozen) For Atticus the customs of Maycomb is substantially a spider web of personal relationships. On 1 mitt, this is commendable because it enables him to know the boondocks's residents as individuals and to brand allowances for their shortcomings and foibles. On the other hand, however, information technology is a problem because it denies him the critical distance needed to identify those shortcomings and foibles in whatsoever larger moral context.
Nosotros commencement become aware of Atticus's blind spot when he explains the Robinson example to his blood brother. It is substantially a lost crusade thanks to "Maycomb's usual disease." "Why reasonable people become stark raving mad," he laments, "when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to sympathize." (p. 117) This is a curious admission for the "Maycomb County born and bred" lawyer who knows his people. It suggests a peculiar innocence in a thoughtful, well-read man who ought to know ameliorate. "Maycomb's usual disease" has many causes, but surely, Atticus must be aware of its historical roots, if for no other reason than that a vocal embodiment of that history holds forth just yards from his own home.
Chapter 11 is a critical section of the novel. Information technology concludes the largely idyllic portrayal of Maycomb we run across in part 1 and deepens the foreshadowing of the tragedy nosotros see in office 2. Chiefly, however, information technology presents Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, a minor only of import character in the story. The lesson'southward text assay explores her significant as a symbol and her function in the town.
Conspicuously, Mrs. Dubose represents the traditional order of the Amalgamated South. I mode Harper Lee establishes this clan is to give Mrs. Dubose a taste for the novels of Sir Walter Scott, whose romantic visions of aristocracy and gentility shaped the Old South'south image of itself. Students are unlikely to recognize that association, however, and illustrating it would almost require another lesson, so information technology goes unexplored hither. Most certainly, though, students volition connect her to the Confederate South through the CSA pistol she is rumored to hide beneath her shawl, and the lesson does explore that. Perhaps more than important, the lesson examines the symbolic import of the camellias Mrs. Dubose proudly cultivates. At ane point Lee juxtaposes them with Mrs. Dubose views on race (p. 144). They serve as something of a stand up-in for Mrs. Dubose herself when Jem, in response to her insults, decapitates the Snowfall-on-the Mountains that border her porch. They take on deeper symbolic resonance when nosotros realize that the camellia is non merely the state blossom of Alabama but is too associated with the Knights of the White Camellia, a Ku Klux Klan-similar organization, founded in 1867, to enforce white supremacy in the S. These associations imbue Jem's destruction of Mrs. Dubose's blossoms, his admission that next time he would pull the bushes upwards by their roots, and his cryptic "fingering" of the flower at the end of the chapter with considerable symbolic import.
To advise further Mrs. Dubose'south association with the Confederate South, you might ask students to speculate on her age. If you lot do, you will probably become responses ranging from sixty to eighty. For the sake of illustration, you might desire to settle on seventy and ask students to calculate the guess twelvemonth of her nascence. The novel seems to exist set effectually 1935 or 36. (The narrator mentions the demise of the National Recovery Administration (p. 336), which was shut down in 1935 when the Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Human action unconstitutional.) Based on those dates, Mrs. Dubose would have been built-in around 1865 or 66, at the finish of or shortly later the Civil War. Thus you might ask how events she witnessed every bit she came of age in the S — the defeat of the Confederacy, the impoverishment of the region, Reconstruction, and the imposition of Jim Crow — might have shaped her attitudes and values, particularly on matters of race.
The lesson explores not only what Mrs. Dubose represents but besides how she functions in the town. She "stations" (p. 134), an important word whose connotations the lesson examines, herself on her porch at a cardinal approach to downtown Maycomb, whence she passes judgment non only on the Finch children but presumably on anybody who passes by. Her judgments reverberate the values and attitudes of her heritage. She embodies the onetime Southern order and, equally she is presented in the novel, is the chief enforcer of its mores. Delicate and passing she may exist, but she is still a public and vocal communicator of the racist ideology that shaped her and the civilization of her region. How Picket, Jem, and Atticus respond to her suggests much most their willingness and ability to acknowledge the depth and pervasiveness of Maycomb'south racism.
Upwards to affiliate 11 simply children, Cecil Jacobs and cousin Francis, have called Atticus a "nigger lover," undoubtedly echoing the opinion of their parents. Mrs. Dubose, from her porch, is the first adult to level that insult (p. 136), and she goes beyond information technology with language far more than acidic than that which Cecil and Francis utilize. "Your male parent's no better than the niggers and trash he works for," she hollers at Scout and Jem as they pass her firm (p. 135) Upbraiding Jem for mumbling during one of his penitential reading sessions, she taunts him: "Don't guess you feel similar holding [your head] up… with your male parent what he is" (p. 146).
It is of import to emphasize how vitriolic and wounding her language is. "So you lot brought that dingy little sister of yours," she sneers upon seeing Spotter with Jem on one visit (p. 141). Moreover, information technology is essential to take students sympathize but what Mrs. Dubose does to Sentry and Jem in their hours with her. "Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem," the narrator tells usa, "on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our father'southward nigger-loving propensities" (p. 144). Here, day after day, an developed, respected, indeed admired past their father and perhaps by the entire town, seeks to communicate the white supremacist heritage of the Sometime Due south to Jem and Lookout, in effect to a new generation of Southerners. Nonetheless Atticus cannot bring himself to point out how morally reprehensible that legacy is. He dismisses it as a set of views "a lot different" from his ain and qualifies even that balmy demur with "mayhap" (p. 149). When he seeks to explain Mrs. Dubose's insults to Jem, his compassion amounts to evasion. "Jem," he says, "she is sometime and sick. Yous can't hold her responsible for what she says and does" (p. 140). Nigh certainly, he has long been aware of Mrs. Dubose's views on race. To attribute them now to her age and health is, like his bafflement over the roots of "Maycomb's usual disease," an example of his unwillingness to acknowledge fully his customs'due south racism.
In affiliate 11 Lookout, Jem, and Atticus judge the quondam woman. "Jem and I hated her," says Scout (p. 132). "She was roughshod" (p. 133). "She was horrible" (p. 142). Information technology is important to remind students that these judgments are not those of the six-year-former Scout or the nine-year-one-time Jem just rather those of the developed Scout, the narrator, who is looking back on her by and offer a considered assessment of it. And her cess of Mrs. Dubose sharply contradicts that of Atticus who believed Mrs. Dubose to be "a great lady," "the bravest person" he always knew (p. 149). Upon hearing Atticus describe her that fashion, Jem throws the candy box that contained her posthumous peace offering into the burn. What does this action suggest about his attitude toward Mrs. Dubose and his male parent'southward paean to her backbone?
Why does Atticus hold Mrs. Dubose in such esteem? The respond lies, perhaps, in the type of courage he attributes to her. Co-ordinate to Atticus, "existent courage" is showtime a struggle "when you know y'all're licked earlier you begin" but beginning anyway and seeing it "information technology through no thing what" (p. 149). It is, in short, persisting in a lost cause. This is precisely the same sort of courage Atticus displays in his defense of Tom Robinson. "The jury," he tells his brother, "couldn't possibly be expected to take Tom Robinson'southward word confronting the Ewells'" (p. 117). Atticus may identify with Mrs. Dubose, seeing in her struggle with morphine addiction a reflection of his struggle with the Robinson case.
Who is correct most Mrs. Dubose, Atticus or his children? Was she a "great lady" or an "old hell-devil"? The lesson asks students to decide. The conclusion of affiliate eleven, richly cryptic, offers little guidance. What does Jem'due south "fingering" of the souvenir camellia represent? Is he merely trying to calm down after his confrontation with his father? Is he reconsidering his stance of Mrs. Dubose in the light of Atticus'south defense of her? Is he questioning the moral judgment of his father who seems to evince an easy, complacent acceptance of the racist views that stung him into a rage? And what about Atticus? When he settles back to read the local paper, is he simply resuming his bookish ways, or is he evading the truth about Mrs. Dubose and the customs of Maycomb by distracting himself with the comforting minutiae of life in his niggling boondocks?
This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The instructor'south guide includes a groundwork note, a text analysis with responses to close reading questions, and an optional follow-upward assignment. The student version, an interactive PDF, contains all of the above except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-upwards assignment.
Instructor's Guide (continues below)
| Student Version (click to open)
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Teacher's Guide
Groundwork
To Kill a Mockingbird is ane of the most pop novels e'er to be published in the United states. Since information technology appeared in 1960, millions of copies have been sold, and in 1962 information technology was made into an accolade-winning movie. Readers accept embraced its protagonist, lawyer Atticus Finch, every bit a hero, a brave human being who follows his conscience in the pursuit of justice fifty-fifty though almost of his neighbors oppose him, and he knows his crusade is lost.
Even though the racism of the Atticus who appears in Go Fix a Watchman, the first typhoon of To Kill a Mockingbird published in 2015, has disappointed many, there is much to admire in him equally he was portrayed in 1960. Even so, as conscientious readers nosotros must seek to understand him fully. This lesson follows suggestions in chapter eleven that raise questions about the scope and depth of his moral vision.
Chapter 11, which concludes office one of the novel, ends the largely idyllic portrayal of Maycomb and deepens the foreshadowing of the tragedy nosotros encounter in part two. Chiefly, however, it introduces Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, a minor just important character. This lesson examines what she represents; how she functions in the novel, and how Scout, Jem, and Atticus reply to her. The children'southward view of her is very dissimilar from that of Atticus, and that precipitous difference raises questions most Atticus's power and willingness to acknowledge the racism of his customs. Scout, Jem, and Atticus judge Mrs. Dubose, and this lesson asks you to judge their judgments.
Text Analysis
Mrs. Dubose and the Boondocks
Lookout and Mrs. Dubose, from "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962.
1. At the beginning of chapter eleven the narrator tell united states that it was "impossible to go to town without passing" the home of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. What position does Mrs. Dubose'southward home occupy in Maycomb?
If it is impossible for the Finch children to become to town without passing Mrs. Dubose's domicile, information technology must be incommunicable for many others, also. Thus her habitation is located at a key entry point to the eye of Maycomb. One might say that she controls the arroyo to the town from i direction.
2. "It was rumored," the narrator says, that Mrs. Dubose keeps a "CSA pistol" nether her shawls. What does CSA represent?
Amalgamated States of America, the official proper noun of the government that attempted to secede from the U.s.a. in 1861.
3. What does the fact that Mrs. Dubose concealment of a pistol is "rumored" suggest?
Obviously, it suggests that no one knows for sure if she is concealing a gun, just it also suggests that she is enough of a public presence in the town to be the bailiwick of the sort of speculation and discussion that spawn rumor.
4. When Scout and Jem pass her firm, Mrs. Dubose is not simply sitting on her porch; she is "stationed" there. What connotations does the word "stationed" carry?
Information technology has military connotations, suggesting the placement of soldiers in strategic locations.
5. Because that Mrs. Dubose'due south business firm controls a key approach to Maycomb'south business concern commune, that she may be armed, and that she "stations" herself on her porch, how does Harper Lee present her in the opening pages of chapter 11?
She presents her as a sentry or baby-sit who is on watch to protect the town in some way.
6. What does Mrs. Dubose do from her outpost on the porch?
She questions people who pass by, rather in the way a guard might. She also passes judgment on their behavior.
7. What does it suggest nearly Mrs. Dubose'south opinions that she sometimes delivers them in a voice and then loud the entire neighborhood tin hear them?
It suggests that her judgments have a public dimension, that she is speaking to the town. Because what we learn most Maycomb's general attitude toward Atticus's defence force of Tom Robinson — Lookout man tells him most folks think he is wrong — she is plainly speaking for the boondocks as well.
viii. When Jem and Watch laissez passer her business firm, Mrs. Dubose insults their father. What is her main complaint against Atticus?
That he has gone "against his raising," in other words, that he has betrayed his course, his family, and the traditions of the town in which he grew up, traditions that Mrs. Dubose represents and upholds in the public judgments she renders from her porch.
nine. How do we know that Mrs. Dubose is trying to exist deliberately hurtful with these remarks?
When she sees Jem's response to her insult — "Jem stiffened" — she knew that her "shot had gone home," and she continues her taunting.
10. Why is it significant that the narrator tells us that Mrs. Dubose'southward insults "aimed at Atticus" were the first she had heard "from an developed"?
Up to this betoken in the novel, just children, Cecil Jacobs and cousin Francis, have insulted Atticus. Their attacks carry less weight than those of adults, even though they may echo the opinions of adults. With Mrs. Dubose, however, an old and possibly revered figure has passed judgment on Atticus's behavior. Given the part that she plays in Maycomb — that of boondocks scout and public enforcer of its traditions — information technology is clear that she speaks for much of the customs of Maycomb. Her words behave substantial weight.
Mrs. Dubose and Her Camellias
"Snow-on-the-Mountains" camellias
Annotation: To understand fully the symbolism of the camellias, it helps to know that the camellia is the state flower of Alabama and that it is associated with the Knights of the White Camellia, a Ku Klux Klan-like organisation, founded in 1867, to enforce white supremacy in the post-Civil War South.
11. When Jem and Sentinel visit Mrs. Dubose to read to her, she "would hound Jem" on her "favorite subjects." What are they?
Her camellias and Atticus's "nigger-loving propensities."
12. Every bit we have seen, Harper Lee links Mrs. Dubose's camellias with her views on race and her insulting behavior toward Atticus and the children. How do these associations explicate why Jem attacks the flowers?
When Jem cuts the heads off the camellias, he is responding to the insults Mrs. Dubose she has delivered against his begetter and the Finch family. He cannot attack her, so he does the side by side best thing: he goes after her prized flowers. The camellias are a stand-in for the erstwhile lady herself.
13. After Jem attacks the flowers, Mrs. Dubose taunts him by proverb that the blossoms have re-grown. Considering the associations that cluster around Mrs. Dubose'due south camellias, what does their re-growth symbolize?
It symbolizes the resilience of the attitudes and values held by Mrs. Dubose.
14. In symbolic terms, what does Jem's access that he would pull the camellia bushes upwardly past their roots advise?
Together the camellias and Mrs. Dubose symbolize the old Confederate South whose attitudes toward race still deeply inform the customs of Maycomb. Jem'southward admission that he would pull them upwardly past the roots suggests that he stands in profound opposition to those attitudes. He is likely to exist far less accepting of the tradition represented by Mrs. Dubose than his father is.
Judging Mrs. Dubose
15. What causes does Atticus cite to business relationship for what Mrs. Dubose says and does?
He attributes her views and her beliefs to her age and ill-health.
16. What other causes might he have cited?
If, in preparing for the lesson, yous had your students explore the events Mrs. Dubose experience growing up in the post-Civil State of war Due south, y'all might refer to that word here. She came of age when the credo of white supremacy dominated Southern civilisation, and undoubtedly that culture had a powerful shaping effect on her. Harper Lee presents her every bit a living embodiment of it. She is fragile and passing but nevertheless a potent public spokeswoman for the racism she grew upwardly with.
17. Is Atticus letting Mrs. Dubose off too easily? Explain your answer.
Some students volition concur with Atticus that the sometime woman — ill, addled by morphine, and dying — should not be held responsible for her views or her behavior. Only judging from what we see of her, neither her views not her behavior is a contempo development, resulting from the deterioration of her health. Apparently, she has launched her opinions from her front end porch for some fourth dimension, and Atticus himself acknowledges her long-standing racist views. Atticus's exoneration of Mrs. Dubose could be interpreted as an evasion, a deliberate refusal to acknowledge her complicity in sustaining the town's racism.
xviii. When, at the finish of the chapter, Jem opens Mrs. Dubose'due south souvenir, he calls her an "erstwhile hell-devil"? Why?
Jem has felt the direct sting of her racist insults.
19. Atticus is quick to interpret Mrs. Dubose's souvenir equally a peace offering and to clinch Jem that "everything is all right." Is "everything all right"?
For Atticus information technology is. He sees the community of Maycomb equally a web of personal relationships, and when Mrs. Dubose mends hers with Jem, everything is, indeed, all right. But for Jem everything does not announced to exist all right.
20. By presenting Jem with the gift of a camellia, what, in symbolic terms, is Mrs. Dubose request Jem to do?
Symbolically, she is asking Jem to accept the heritage she and her camellias represent.
21. Atticus defines "real courage" as persevering in a lost crusade, seeing a struggle though even though yous know you are going to lose. Why would this definition of courage be particularly appealing to him, and why would it crusade him to adore Mrs. Dubose?
This is the sort of courage he is displaying in his defense force of Tom Robinson. He knows he will non convince the jury to accept Robinson's discussion over that of the Ewells, but he is forging ahead anyway. Believing that Mrs. Dubose displays the same courage, he may see his struggle in the Robinson instance reflected in her struggle confronting drug addiction.
Scout and Atticus Finch, from "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962.
22. What does Jem practise after his father praises Mrs. Dubose?
He throws the box that contained her gift into the burn down.
23. What does this action suggest about his response to Mrs. Dubose, her gift, and his father's view of the former lady?
It suggests that, at least to some caste, he rejects all 3. Information technology is important to annotation, however, that he does keep the flower.
24. What does Jem's "fingering" of the camellia suggest?
The pregnant of this human action is ambiguous. Jem may simply exist trying to at-home down afterward his confrontation with his father, or he may be reconsidering his opinion of Mrs. Dubose. And so, too, he might be critically questioning what seems to exist his begetter's easy, complacent credence of Mrs. Dubose's virulent racism.
25. How do you interpret Atticus's return to his reading of the local newspaper?
The meaning of this act is ambiguous, as well. Atticus may simply be resuming his bookish ways, but students may sense some smugness or complacency on Atticus's part as he settles in to read while his son broods. Clearly, he has not convinced Jem that Mrs. Dubose was a "great lady." The boy is in some manner processing his confrontation with his male parent. Atticus seems unaware of the seriousness of what but happened. His retreat to his paper may amount to an evasion of the truth near Mrs. Dubose and about Maycomb itself.
26. In affiliate xi Jem, Picket, and Atticus judge Mrs. Dubose. "Jem and I hated her," says Lookout man. "She was vicious." "She was horrible." All the same Atticus considers her a "great lady," the "bravest person" he e'er knew. Do you concord with the children or Atticus? Explain your respond.
(Annotation to teacher: Yous may want to make the response to this question a follow-upwardly written assignment.)
Follow-Upwardly Consignment
Cull one of the following themes explored in affiliate xi of To Impale a Mockingbird: racism, the generation gap, the role of history in the nowadays, or another theme every bit designated past your teacher. In what ways can you lot see this aforementioned theme present either in other literature or in our world today? Use specific examples to develop a comparing between chapter eleven and literature or the world today. Organize and construct a short (two minutes) oral presentation on your findings and share with your classmates. As y'all speak, be sure to begin with a clear thesis and give specific examples to show your points.
Text:
- Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, HarperCollins: 1960 (1000 Central Publishing edition: 1982), affiliate xi.
Images:
- Sentry (Mary Badham) and Mrs. Dubose (Ruth White) in "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962. Universal International Pictures, Silver Screen Collection.
- Scout (Mary Badham) and Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) in "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962. Universal International Pictures, Silverish Screen Collection.
Source: https://americainclass.org/the-moral-vision-of-atticus-finch/
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