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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Chapter 28 begins at a school pageant. What is the mood, Student_1?
Light and almost comic. Scout is a ham in a heavy wire-and-cloth costume, and she misses her cue.
How does the mood change, Student_2?
On the walk home, in the dark. They hear footsteps that stop whenever they stop.
Why is that technique effective?
Because we only hear what the children hear, so our imagination fills in the danger.
Right. Lee builds suspense through sound and darkness rather than through description.
Scout's costume is funny at first. What does it become?
A cage. It stops her from seeing or moving easily when the attack starts.
Is it only a handicap?
No. In the following chapters we learn that it also protected her.
What does this tell us about Lee's use of objects?
That an ordinary object can carry two meanings at once, comic and serious, a trap and a shield.
And why does it matter that Scout cannot see her attacker?
Because the reader is as confused as she is, so the mystery carries on into Chapter 29.
a light school pageant leads to sudden danger, which makes the attack more shocking.
Scout's view is restricted by her costume, so the reader shares her confusion.
the footsteps that stop when the children stop create fear without any description.
the attack is the physical result of Bob Ewell's resentment after the trial.
the costume is comic at first, then a trap, and later turns out to be a shield.
Example of foreshadowing: the earlier threats and harassment by Bob Ewell prepare the reader to hear the footsteps as dangerous.
Example of dramatic irony: Scout believes the footsteps belong to a prankster, while the reader senses real danger.
Example of an object carrying two meanings: Scout's costume is a funny part of a pageant, and then an obstacle in the dark.
A ham in the pageant, a walk in the night; footsteps that stop and a terrible fright.
Picture a stage with the lights going down. First come music and laughter, then silence, then footsteps. By the time the lights are out the audience is holding its breath, just as the reader does in this chapter.
Remember H.A.M. for the chapter: Halloween pageant, Attack in the dark, Mystery of who is there.
D.A.R.K. - Danger after a light evening, Attack seen through Scout's limits, Rescuer still unknown, Kept in suspense
Term
What does Scout wear at the Halloween pageant?
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Term
What embarrassing thing happens to Scout during the pageant?
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Term
What do the children hear on the walk home?
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Why can Scout not see what is happening during the attack?
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Which narrative technique keeps the reader in suspense?
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A staged show, often put on by a school or town, in which children perform in costume.
The tension a reader feels when waiting to find out what will happen, especially when danger is near.
Hints earlier in a story about what will happen later.
A story told by a narrator looking back on past events, as the adult Scout looks back on her childhood.
A situation in which the reader senses more than a character does, as when Scout thinks the footsteps are a joke.
The point of greatest tension or action in a story or part of a story.
The position from which a story is told, which controls what the reader can see and know.
Chapter 28 of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' follows Scout and Jem through Halloween night, from a light-hearted school pageant to a dark walk home on which they are attacked. It turns the long shadow of the trial into sudden physical danger.
On Halloween night the Maycomb school holds a pageant, and Scout takes part dressed as a ham in a heavy costume of wire and cloth. She falls asleep backstage, misses her cue and makes an embarrassing entrance, so she and Jem leave for home only after the crowd has gone. On the dark road they hear footsteps that stop whenever they stop. Scout, hampered by her costume, can hear far more than she can see. An unseen person attacks the children, Jem is badly hurt, and someone else steps in. The chapter closes at the Finch house, where Sheriff Heck Tate reports that Bob Ewell is lying dead under the tree with a kitchen knife in his ribs, while the identity of the rescuer is still hidden from Scout and from the reader.
Chapter 28 is the chapter in which the threat that has been building since the trial finally becomes physical. It begins with something light and almost comic, a school pageant on Halloween night, and it ends in darkness and violence. The contrast is deliberate: Harper Lee lets an ordinary evening turn without warning into the most dangerous moment the children have faced.
The pageant. On Halloween night the Maycomb school holds a pageant, and Scout takes part dressed as a ham. Her costume is made of wire and cloth, and it makes it hard for her to move or to see. Jem agrees to take her to the school. Scout falls asleep backstage, misses her cue and makes a late entrance, to the amusement of the audience. Humiliated, she stays out of sight until the crowd has gone, and so she and Jem start for home in the dark, after nearly everyone else has left.
The walk home. The road leads through the dark, past the oak tree by the Radley place that the children know well. Scout, hampered by her costume, can hear but barely see. They hear footsteps behind them. When they stop, the footsteps stop, and when they walk on, the footsteps begin again. Scout assumes that it is another child playing a Halloween joke, but the reader senses that something worse is coming. Lee builds the suspense through sound, darkness and Scout's restricted view, so the reader's fear grows as the walk goes on.
The attack. Out of the darkness someone attacks the children. Jem screams, and in the struggle Scout, trapped inside her costume, cannot tell what is happening. Jem is badly hurt. Then someone else steps in and pulls the attacker off her. Scout cannot see who either man is. She knows only that she is alive, that Jem is hurt and that a stranger is helping them. The wire and cloth that restricted her sight and movement will turn out, as the next chapters show, to have protected her from serious harm.
Why the chapter matters. The attack is the final consequence of the trial. Bob Ewell was humiliated by the way Atticus exposed his story in court, and over the previous chapters he has threatened and harassed people connected with the case. Chapter 29 will make clear that he is the attacker. The chapter also shows Lee's use of retrospective narration: Scout tells the story as an adult, and the hints of danger colour even the ordinary details of the evening. The chapter closes with Sheriff Tate's news that Bob Ewell is dead under the tree, and the rest of the story will reveal who saved the children and what Scout learns from it.