One page of key quotes to learn for the English Literature exam on To Kill a Mockingbird, for AQA or the WJEC GCSE. Simple!
Finches: ‘stripped of everything but their land’ ‘related by blood or marriage’ a ‘tired old town’ Atticus ‘read to us, played with us’ and treated us with ‘courteous detachment’. Boo is an ‘unknown entity’. Mrs Dubose is ‘plain hell’. Dill is a ‘pocket Merlin’, ‘fascinated’ by Boo, the ‘neighbourhood legend’, ‘drooled’ ‘eyes popped’, ‘dined on raw squirrels’ R‘ragged’ kids ‘chopped cotton and fed hogs’ ‘immune to imaginative literature’ Scout asks A: Are we poor?/ ”We are indeed.” Walter Cunningham (Scout) “You’re shamin’ him”
Little Chuck poor but a ‘born gentleman’. Burris: neck is ‘dark grey’, ‘rusty’, ‘black deep into the quick’. He talks ‘expansively’ a ‘hard-down mean one’: “snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher” Atticus says of the Ewells: ‘disgrace’, ‘people but they lived like animals’, Mr Ewell ‘spends all his relief money on whiskey, his children ‘crying from hunger pains.’
Miss Maudie ‘benign’, ‘reign over the street in magisterial beauty’, mimosa ‘like angels’ breath’. Old Mr Radley “believe anything that’s pleasure’s a sin”. Scout: “Atticus says God’s loving folks like you love yourself”. Atticus: “stop tormenting that man” Jem “Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember. I wanna keep it that way.” ‘trembling’.
Atticus to Uncle Jack: children ‘can spot an evasion faster than adults’ Scout: “I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year When she sees snow thinks: “the world’s endin’” Atticus ‘seems that only children weep.’ (after Tom Robinson is killed) Atticus to Jem: It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. Francis: “a nigger-lover” “ruinin the family” Mrs Dubose: “moral degradation
Calpurnia to Scout: ’it’s not ladylike’ Calpurnia ‘They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses’ Scout but ‘you know better’ Calpurnia ‘it’s not necessary to tell all you know’ ‘made me think there was some skill involved in being a girl’ hand was ‘as wide as a bed slat and twice as hard’
Aunt A; don’t talk ‘in front of them’ Atticus she’s ‘one of the family’ Aunt A: ‘disapproval’ ‘disgrace’
‘Negroes worshipped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays.’
Mr Dolphus Raymond: ‘real good to those chillun’, ‘from a real old family’, ‘owns all one side of the riverbank’. Jem: “real sad” “don’t belong”, “Coloured folks won’t have ‘em” / “white folks won’t have ‘em” but Lee describes them as ‘happily’, ‘rich’, ‘beautiful’. Mr D says Dill is right to “cry about the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too.”
Atticus > Jem on Mrs Dubose “I wanted you to see what real courage is… when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
Jem: “If [people are] all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other?’ ‘I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time. It’s because he wants to stay inside.” Scout: Why doesn’t Boo run off? Jem: ’Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to”
Town/Trial Jail ‘looked like a victorian privy’ a ‘respectable look’ When the men come for Tom they are ‘shadows’, ‘strangers’: ‘a gang of wild animals can be stopped’ ‘they’re still human’. Miss Maudie: ‘it’s like a roman carnival’ ‘holiday mood’
Ewells ‘gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day’. ‘brilliant red geraniums’ Bob Ewell says Mayella was “screamin like a stuck hog”, “nigger nest”. M is ‘a young girl’, ‘fragile looking’ but ‘thick bodied’ ‘Her face was a mixture of terror and fury.’ ‘loneliest person in the world’ ‘white people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs’. Tom helped her from ‘sheer goodness’ says she “sorta jumped on me” He is ‘soft black velvet’ ‘shone’ ‘flashes’ Bob Ewell: “you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya.”
Atticus says: This case is as simple as black and white” “not one iota of medical evidence… that the crime ever took place”… he says Tom Robinson “a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman”
Mr Ewell “he did what any God-fearing, persevering respectable white man would do”
Atticus references Jefferson and the American Constitution: “our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”
The author, Melanie Kendry, is an Oxford graduate, outstanding-rated English Language and Literature teacher and of ages 10-18 in the British education system. In 2012, she was nominated for Pearson’s Teaching Awards. As a private tutor, she raises grades often from C to A. Her writing is also featured in The Huffington Post. She offers private tuition in the Haywards Heath area, West Sussex.