In Chapter 30, Heck Tate makes an indirect allusion to one
of Atticus Finches proverbs of To Kill a Mockingbird: He tells
Atticus,
taking the one man who's done you and this town a
great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight--to me, that's a
sin.
This statement is a
rewording of Atticus's advice to his children that it is a sin to kill a
mockingbird.
In this same chapter, Scout imitates her
father in speaking to Boo as though he is just an average neighbor, one whom she
converses with regularly, a lesson she has learned and used with Mr. Cunningham earlier
in Chapter 15. There Scout approaches Mr. Cunningham and speaks to him in order to
diffuse the tension of the mob that has formed at the jail. Scout
narrates,
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk
to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.
Mr. Cunningham displayed no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more
in a last-ditch effort to make him feel at
home.
Of course, Scout's
actions have a more important result that she has considered: it diffuses the anger and
anonymity of the mob. Later, in Chapter 31, after Scout has Boo Radley escort her to his
porch, she stands there after he has gone inside. Turning to go home, Scout remarks, "I
had never seen our neighborhood from this angle." After looking around, Scout
reflects,
Atticus was right. One time he said you never
really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing
on the Radley porch was
enough.
These "Atticcusims"
have now become a part of Scout, indicating her maturation, for when the child
incorporates the lessons of the parent, she is truly, then, an adult. Harper Lee's
novel is a bildungsroman.
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