What Chapter Does Jem Have to Read to Mrs Dubose
Counselor: Lucinda MacKethan, Emerita Professor of English, North Carolina Country University, National Humanities Center Swain
©2014 National Humanities Eye
Warning: This lesson includes language within the text reflective of the time in which the text was written. This linguistic communication is at present considered offensive.
In To Kill a Mockingbird what does Atticus Finch's human relationship with the minor but of import character Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose suggest most the quality of his moral vision?
Understanding
In To Kill a Mockingbird Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose embodies and gives public voice to the values and attitudes of the Onetime S. The way the novel'due south protagonist Atticus Finch responds to her suggests that he lacks the critical perspective needed to acknowledge the depth and pervasiveness of his customs'southward racism.
Text
Harper Lee, To Impale A Mockingbird, chapter 11.
Text Type
Fiction
Text Complexity
Grades 11-CCR complexity band.
For more data on text complication see these resources from achievethecore.org.
Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.
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Common Core State Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RI.nine-10.3 (Clarify how the writer unfolds an assay or series of ideas or events.)
- ELA-LITERACY.RI.ix-10.iv (Make up one's mind the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.)
Teacher's Notation
(Page numbers refer to the 1982 Grand Cardinal Publishing paperback edition.)
The publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2022 focused considerable attending on the moral vision of Atticus Finch. Readers who plant him to be an exemplar of tolerance and backbone in To Impale a Mockingbird were shocked to hear him voice racist views in Watchman. How could the grapheme who was so aware in his original incarnation, gear up in the 1930s, become so bigoted in his second coming, set in the 1950s? Readers and critics scrutinized Mockingbird to see if the Atticus who defended Tom Robinson contained the seeds of the Atticus who twenty years afterward joined the Klan-similar Citizens' Council. They might profitably have focused on affiliate 11, for in that location we larn that Atticus suffers from a moral blind spot, which prevents him from fully acknowledging his community's racism. Analyzing that chapter, this lesson offers students the opportunity to develop a critical perspective on Atticus'southward judgment and grapheme.
At the outset it is critical to emphasize how deeply embedded Atticus is in Maycomb. "He liked Maycomb," the narrator tells us early in the novel, "he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people; they knew him…. Atticus was related by claret or marriage to most every family unit in the town." (p. 6) For Atticus the community of Maycomb is substantially a web of personal relationships. On i paw, this is commendable considering it enables him to know the boondocks's residents as individuals and to make allowances for their shortcomings and foibles. On the other mitt, however, information technology is a trouble considering it denies him the critical altitude needed to place those shortcomings and foibles in whatever larger moral context.
We first become aware of Atticus's bullheaded spot when he explains the Robinson example to his brother. It is essentially a lost cause thanks to "Maycomb's usual disease." "Why reasonable people go stark raving mad," he laments, "when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand." (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 meliorate. "Maycomb's usual disease" has many causes, just 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 department of the novel. Information technology concludes the largely idyllic portrayal of Maycomb we see in part 1 and deepens the foreshadowing of the tragedy we meet in part 2. Chiefly, withal, it presents Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, a minor but important character in the story. The lesson's text analysis explores her meaning every bit a symbol and her function in the town.
Clearly, Mrs. Dubose represents the traditional lodge of the Confederate Due south. Ane way Harper Lee establishes this association is to requite Mrs. Dubose a taste for the novels of Sir Walter Scott, whose romantic visions of aristocracy and gentility shaped the Old South's epitome of itself. Students are unlikely to recognize that association, however, and illustrating it would almost require some other lesson, so it goes unexplored here. Nearly certainly, though, students volition connect her to the Confederate South through the CSA pistol she is rumored to hide below her shawl, and the lesson does explore that. Perhaps more important, the lesson examines the symbolic import of the camellias Mrs. Dubose proudly cultivates. At one indicate 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 Snow-on-the Mountains that border her porch. They take on deeper symbolic resonance when we realize that the camellia is not only the state blossom of Alabama but is as well associated with the Knights of the White Camellia, a Ku Klux Klan-like system, founded in 1867, to enforce white supremacy in the South. These associations imbue Jem'south destruction of Mrs. Dubose'southward blossoms, his admission that adjacent time he would pull the bushes up by their roots, and his ambiguous "fingering" of the flower at the cease of the chapter with considerable symbolic import.
To suggest further Mrs. Dubose's clan with the Confederate South, you might inquire students to speculate on her age. If you do, you volition probably go responses ranging from threescore to eighty. For the sake of illustration, you lot might desire to settle on seventy and ask students to calculate the approximate yr of her birth. The novel seems to be set around 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 Act unconstitutional.) Based on those dates, Mrs. Dubose would have been born around 1865 or 66, at the end of or shortly after the Civil War. Thus y'all might ask how events she witnessed as she came of age in the Southward — the defeat of the Confederacy, the impoverishment of the region, Reconstruction, and the imposition of Jim Crow — might have shaped her attitudes and values, especially on matters of race.
The lesson explores not just what Mrs. Dubose represents but also how she functions in the town. She "stations" (p. 134), an important word whose connotations the lesson examines, herself on her porch at a key approach to downtown Maycomb, whence she passes judgment not only on the Finch children simply presumably on everyone who passes by. Her judgments reverberate the values and attitudes of her heritage. She embodies the old Southern social club and, every bit she is presented in the novel, is the chief enforcer of its mores. Fragile and passing she may exist, simply she is notwithstanding a public and vocal communicator of the racist ideology that shaped her and the culture of her region. How Scout, Jem, and Atticus reply to her suggests much about their willingness and ability to acknowledge the depth and pervasiveness of Maycomb'southward racism.
Up to affiliate 11 but children, Cecil Jacobs and cousin Francis, accept called Atticus a "nigger lover," undoubtedly echoing the opinion of their parents. Mrs. Dubose, from her porch, is the start adult to level that insult (p. 136), and she goes beyond it with language far more acidic than that which Cecil and Francis utilise. "Your father'southward no meliorate than the niggers and trash he works for," she hollers at Scout and Jem every bit they laissez passer her firm (p. 135) Upbraiding Jem for mumbling during one of his penitential reading sessions, she taunts him: "Don't guess you feel like holding [your head] up… with your father what he is" (p. 146).
Information technology is important to emphasize how vitriolic and wounding her language is. "And then you brought that dirty little sister of yours," she sneers upon seeing Sentry with Jem on one visit (p. 141). Moreover, it is essential to have students understand just what Mrs. Dubose does to Lookout man and Jem in their hours with her. "Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem," the narrator tells united states, "on her favorite subjects, her camellias and our male parent's nigger-loving propensities" (p. 144). Here, twenty-four hour period subsequently day, an adult, respected, indeed admired by their father and maybe past the entire town, seeks to communicate the white supremacist heritage of the Onetime Due south to Jem and Sentinel, in effect to a new generation of Southerners. Nevertheless Atticus cannot bring himself to bespeak out how morally reprehensible that legacy is. He dismisses it as a prepare of views "a lot different" from his own and qualifies even that mild demur with "maybe" (p. 149). When he seeks to explain Mrs. Dubose's insults to Jem, his compassion amounts to evasion. "Jem," he says, "she is old and ill. Y'all can't hold her responsible for what she says and does" (p. 140). Nearly certainly, he has long been aware of Mrs. Dubose'due south views on race. To aspect them at present to her historic period and health is, like his bafflement over the roots of "Maycomb's usual disease," an instance of his unwillingness to acknowledge fully his community'south racism.
In chapter 11 Lookout man, Jem, and Atticus approximate the old woman. "Jem and I hated her," says Sentry (p. 132). "She was vicious" (p. 133). "She was horrible" (p. 142). It is important to remind students that these judgments are not those of the vi-year-erstwhile Watch or the nine-twelvemonth-one-time Jem but rather those of the adult Scout, the narrator, who is looking back on her past and offering a considered assessment of information technology. And her cess of Mrs. Dubose sharply contradicts that of Atticus who believed Mrs. Dubose to exist "a great lady," "the bravest person" he ever knew (p. 149). Upon hearing Atticus describe her that way, Jem throws the candy box that contained her posthumous peace offering into the fire. What does this activity advise nigh his attitude toward Mrs. Dubose and his begetter'southward paean to her backbone?
Why does Atticus agree Mrs. Dubose in such esteem? The answer lies, perhaps, in the type of backbone he attributes to her. According to Atticus, "existent courage" is commencement a struggle "when you lot know you're licked before you begin" only beginning anyway and seeing it "it through no matter 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 force of Tom Robinson. "The jury," he tells his brother, "couldn't possibly be expected to take Tom Robinson's word confronting the Ewells'" (p. 117). Atticus may place with Mrs. Dubose, seeing in her struggle with morphine habit a reflection of his struggle with the Robinson instance.
Who is correct about Mrs. Dubose, Atticus or his children? Was she a "bang-up lady" or an "quondam hell-devil"? The lesson asks students to decide. The conclusion of chapter xi, richly ambiguous, offers lilliputian guidance. What does Jem'south "fingering" of the souvenir camellia represent? Is he simply trying to calm downwardly after his confrontation with his father? Is he reconsidering his opinion 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 nigh Atticus? When he settles back to read the local paper, is he but resuming his academic ways, or is he evading the truth about Mrs. Dubose and the customs of Maycomb past distracting himself with the comforting minutiae of life in his petty town?
This lesson is divided into ii parts, both accessible below. The teacher's guide includes a background note, a text analysis with responses to shut reading questions, and an optional follow-upward assignment. The pupil version, an interactive PDF, contains all of the higher up except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up consignment.
Teacher's Guide (continues below)
| Student Version (click to open)
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Teacher's Guide
Background
To Kill a Mockingbird is 1 of the most popular novels always to exist published in the United States. Since it appeared in 1960, millions of copies have been sold, and in 1962 it was made into an honor-winning picture show. Readers take embraced its protagonist, lawyer Atticus Finch, as a hero, a dauntless man who follows his conscience in the pursuit of justice even though most of his neighbors oppose him, and he knows his cause is lost.
Even though the racism of the Atticus who appears in Go Set a Watchman, the first typhoon of To Impale a Mockingbird published in 2015, has disappointed many, there is much to admire in him as he was portrayed in 1960. Withal, as careful readers we must seek to understand him fully. This lesson follows suggestions in chapter 11 that raise questions virtually 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 we encounter in part two. Chiefly, however, information technology introduces Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, a minor but important grapheme. This lesson examines what she represents; how she functions in the novel, and how Scout, Jem, and Atticus respond to her. The children'due south view of her is very different from that of Atticus, and that sharp deviation raises questions well-nigh Atticus's ability and willingness to admit 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 Town
Scout and Mrs. Dubose, from "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962.
i. At the beginning of chapter 11 the narrator tell united states of america that information technology was "impossible to go to boondocks without passing" the home of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. What position does Mrs. Dubose's dwelling house occupy in Maycomb?
If information technology is impossible for the Finch children to get to town without passing Mrs. Dubose'due south dwelling house, information technology must be incommunicable for many others, too. Thus her home is located at a key entry betoken to the heart of Maycomb. One might say that she controls the approach to the town from one management.
2. "It was rumored," the narrator says, that Mrs. Dubose keeps a "CSA pistol" under her shawls. What does CSA correspond?
Confederate States of America, the official name of the authorities that attempted to secede from the United states of america in 1861.
three. What does the fact that Mrs. Dubose concealment of a pistol is "rumored" suggest?
Obviously, information technology suggests that no one knows for certain if she is concealing a gun, but information technology also suggests that she is enough of a public presence in the town to be the subject area of the sort of speculation and discussion that spawn rumor.
four. When Sentinel and Jem laissez passer her house, Mrs. Dubose is non simply sitting on her porch; she is "stationed" there. What connotations does the word "stationed" carry?
It has war machine connotations, suggesting the placement of soldiers in strategic locations.
five. Considering that Mrs. Dubose's house controls a cardinal approach to Maycomb's business commune, that she may be armed, and that she "stations" herself on her porch, how does Harper Lee nowadays her in the opening pages of chapter 11?
She presents her as a spotter or baby-sit who is on lookout 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 fashion a guard might. She too passes judgment on their beliefs.
7. What does it suggest virtually Mrs. Dubose's opinions that she sometimes delivers them in a voice so loud the entire neighborhood tin hear them?
It suggests that her judgments have a public dimension, that she is speaking to the town. Considering what nosotros learn virtually Maycomb's general attitude toward Atticus's defense of Tom Robinson — Lookout man tells him almost folks think he is wrong — she is apparently speaking for the town equally well.
8. When Jem and Scout pass her business firm, Mrs. Dubose insults their male parent. What is her main complaint confronting Atticus?
That he has gone "against his raising," in other words, that he has betrayed his class, his family, and the traditions of the town in which he grew upwards, traditions that Mrs. Dubose represents and upholds in the public judgments she renders from her porch.
9. How practise we know that Mrs. Dubose is trying to be deliberately hurtful with these remarks?
When she sees Jem'due south response to her insult — "Jem stiffened" — she knew that her "shot had gone abode," and she continues her taunting.
10. Why is it significant that the narrator tells us that Mrs. Dubose's insults "aimed at Atticus" were the commencement she had heard "from an developed"?
Up to this point in the novel, only children, Cecil Jacobs and cousin Francis, take insulted Atticus. Their attacks carry less weight than those of adults, fifty-fifty though they may echo the opinions of adults. With Mrs. Dubose, still, an old and perhaps revered figure has passed judgment on Atticus's behavior. Given the role that she plays in Maycomb — that of boondocks sentinel and public enforcer of its traditions — information technology is clear that she speaks for much of the community of Maycomb. Her words carry substantial weight.
Mrs. Dubose and Her Camellias
"Snowfall-on-the-Mountains" camellias
Note: To understand fully the symbolism of the camellias, it helps to know that the camellia is the country blossom of Alabama and that it is associated with the Knights of the White Camellia, a Ku Klux Klan-like organization, founded in 1867, to enforce white supremacy in the post-Civil War South.
11. When Jem and Scout 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. Equally we accept seen, Harper Lee links Mrs. Dubose's camellias with her views on race and her insulting beliefs toward Atticus and the children. How do these associations explain 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 father and the Finch family. He cannot attack her, so he does the next best thing: he goes afterwards her prized flowers. The camellias are a stand-in for the old lady herself.
13. Afterward Jem attacks the flowers, Mrs. Dubose taunts him by saying that the blossoms have re-grown. Considering the associations that cluster around Mrs. Dubose's camellias, what does their re-growth symbolize?
It symbolizes the resilience of the attitudes and values held by Mrs. Dubose.
fourteen. In symbolic terms, what does Jem's access that he would pull the camellia bushes up by their roots propose?
Together the camellias and Mrs. Dubose symbolize the old Amalgamated South whose attitudes toward race notwithstanding deeply inform the community of Maycomb. Jem's admission that he would pull them up by the roots suggests that he stands in profound opposition to those attitudes. He is likely to be far less accepting of the tradition represented by Mrs. Dubose than his father is.
Judging Mrs. Dubose
15. What causes does Atticus cite to account for what Mrs. Dubose says and does?
He attributes her views and her behavior to her historic period and ill-health.
sixteen. What other causes might he accept cited?
If, in preparing for the lesson, you had your students explore the events Mrs. Dubose feel growing up in the post-Ceremonious State of war Southward, yous might refer to that discussion hither. She came of age when the ideology of white supremacy dominated Southern culture, and undoubtedly that culture had a powerful shaping effect on her. Harper Lee presents her as a living embodiment of information technology. She is fragile and passing only all the same a potent public spokeswoman for the racism she grew upwardly with.
17. Is Atticus letting Mrs. Dubose off besides easily? Explain your respond.
Some students will concord with Atticus that the quondam woman — sick, addled past morphine, and dying — should not be held responsible for her views or her beliefs. But judging from what nosotros see of her, neither her views non her behavior is a recent development, resulting from the deterioration of her wellness. Apparently, she has launched her opinions from her front porch for some time, and Atticus himself acknowledges her long-continuing racist views. Atticus's exoneration of Mrs. Dubose could exist interpreted as an evasion, a deliberate refusal to acknowledge her complicity in sustaining the town's racism.
eighteen. When, at the terminate of the chapter, Jem opens Mrs. Dubose'south souvenir, he calls her an "erstwhile hell-devil"? Why?
Jem has felt the straight sting of her racist insults.
nineteen. Atticus is quick to interpret Mrs. Dubose'south gift as a peace offering and to clinch Jem that "everything is all correct." Is "everything all right"?
For Atticus information technology is. He sees the community of Maycomb equally a spider web of personal relationships, and when Mrs. Dubose mends hers with Jem, everything is, indeed, all right. Only for Jem everything does not appear to be all correct.
20. By presenting Jem with the souvenir of a camellia, what, in symbolic terms, is Mrs. Dubose asking Jem to practice?
Symbolically, she is request Jem to have the heritage she and her camellias represent.
21. Atticus defines "real courage" as persevering in a lost cause, seeing a struggle though even though you know you lot are going to lose. Why would this definition of courage exist particularly appealing to him, and why would information technology cause him to admire Mrs. Dubose?
This is the sort of courage he is displaying in his defence force of Tom Robinson. He knows he will non convince the jury to have Robinson's word over that of the Ewells, only he is forging ahead anyway. Assertive that Mrs. Dubose displays the same courage, he may see his struggle in the Robinson instance reflected in her struggle against drug habit.
Lookout man and Atticus Finch, from "To Impale A Mockingbird," 1962.
22. What does Jem do after his father praises Mrs. Dubose?
He throws the box that contained her gift into the fire.
23. What does this action suggest about his response to Mrs. Dubose, her souvenir, and his father'southward view of the old lady?
It suggests that, at least to some degree, he rejects all three. It is important to note, notwithstanding, that he does keep the bloom.
24. What does Jem's "fingering" of the camellia suggest?
The meaning of this human action is ambiguous. Jem may merely exist trying to at-home down later on his confrontation with his father, or he may exist reconsidering his opinion of Mrs. Dubose. Then, too, he might be critically questioning what seems to be his father'due south easy, complacent credence of Mrs. Dubose's virulent racism.
25. How do y'all interpret Atticus'southward return to his reading of the local newspaper?
The pregnant of this act is ambiguous, too. Atticus may but exist resuming his bookish ways, but students may sense some smugness or self-approbation on Atticus's office as he settles in to read while his son broods. Clearly, he has not convinced Jem that Mrs. Dubose was a "slap-up lady." The boy is in some way processing his confrontation with his male parent. Atticus seems unaware of the seriousness of what only happened. His retreat to his newspaper may amount to an evasion of the truth about Mrs. Dubose and about Maycomb itself.
26. In chapter 11 Jem, Picket, and Atticus judge Mrs. Dubose. "Jem and I hated her," says Spotter. "She was vicious." "She was horrible." Yet Atticus considers her a "corking lady," the "bravest person" he e'er knew. Practice you lot hold with the children or Atticus? Explain your reply.
(Note to teacher: You may desire to make the response to this question a follow-up written assignment.)
Follow-Upwardly Assignment
Cull one of the post-obit themes explored in affiliate eleven of To Kill a Mockingbird: racism, the generation gap, the role of history in the nowadays, or another theme as designated by your teacher. In what ways tin can you see this aforementioned theme present either in other literature or in our world today? Utilize specific examples to develop a comparing between affiliate 11 and literature or the world today. Organize and construct a short (ii minutes) oral presentation on your findings and share with your classmates. As you speak, be sure to begin with a clear thesis and give specific examples to prove your points.
Text:
- Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, HarperCollins: 1960 (Grand Central Publishing edition: 1982), chapter 11.
Images:
- Lookout man (Mary Badham) and Mrs. Dubose (Ruth White) in "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962. Universal International Pictures, Silvery Screen Collection.
- Lookout (Mary Badham) and Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) in "To Kill A Mockingbird," 1962. Universal International Pictures, Silver Screen Collection.
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Source: https://americainclass.org/the-moral-vision-of-atticus-finch/
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