TO Kill a Mockingbird Chapters 4-6 Review

Master To Kill a Mockingbird chapters 4-6! Vocabulary, plot, and character analysis.

1. In chapter 4 on page 33, Scout says: “The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics.”The word in underlined bold print, auspicious, most closely means: favorable unpromising unsuitable unlucky 2. In chapter 4 on page 37 Scout narrates: “We had strolled to the front yard, where Dill stood looking down the street at the dreary face of the Radley Place. “I—smell—death,” he said. “I do, I mean it,” he said, when I told him to shut up” A synonym for the word in underlined bold print is: interesting bleak cheerful encouraging 3. In chapter 5 on page 42, Scout describes her relationship with Ms. Maudie: “Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn’t jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with their behavior.”The best word to replace the word in underlined bold print is: yelled questioned explicit implied 4. In chapter 5 on page 44, Scout and Ms. Maudie have a conversation about Boo Radley:“Miss Maudie,” I said one evening, “do you think Boo Radley’s still alive?”“His name’s Arthur and he’s alive,” she said. She was rocking slowly in her bigoak chair. “Do you smell my mimosa? It’s like angels’ breath this evening.”“Yessum. How do you know?”“Know what, child?”“That B—Mr. Arthur’s still alive?”“What a morbidquestion. But I suppose it’s a morbid subject. I know he’s alive,Jean Louise, because I haven’t seen him carried out yet.”“Maybe he died and they stuffed him up the chimney.”The word in underlined bold most closely means: pleasant joyful gloomy cheerful 5. Read this passage from chapter 5: “We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, “Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!” Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange. He said he was trying to get Miss Maudie’s goat, that he had been trying unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the last person in the world Miss Maudie would think about marrying but the first person she thought about teasing, and the best defense to her was spirited offense, all of which we understood clearly.”...to get Miss Maudie’s goatis an example of: simile synonym metaphor idiom 6. In chapter 6, Scout is fearful of Boo Radley: “Had Jem’s pants been safely on him, we would not have slept much anyway. Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch was magnified three-fold; every scratch of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge, every passing Negro laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects splashing against the screen were Boo Radley’s insane fingers picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry trees were malignant, hovering, alive. I lingered between sleep and wakefulness until I heard Jem murmur.”An antonym for malignant is: deadly harmless lethal destructive 7. Reread this passage from chapter 4 and answer the question that follows.Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in the afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappers.My first impulse was to get it into my mouth as quickly as possible, but I remembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot. The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth: Wrigley’s Double-Mint.When Jem came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told him I found it.“Don’t eat things you find, Scout.”“This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree.”Jem growled.“Well it was,” I said. “It was sticking in that tree yonder, the one comin‘ from school.”“Spit it out right now!”I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. “I’ve been chewin‘ it all afternoon and I ain’t dead yet, not even sick.”Jem stamped his foot. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even touch the trees over there? You’ll get killed if you do!”“You touched the house once!”“That was different! You go gargle—right now, you hear me?”“Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa my mouth.”“You don’t ‘n’ I’ll tell Calpurnia on you!”Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me. For some reason, my first year of school had wrought a great change in our relationship: Calpurnia’s tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in my business had faded to gentle grumblings of general disapproval. On my part, I went to much trouble, sometimes, not to provoke her.What two "superstitions" do the children have in connection with the Radley house? 8. Reread this passage from chapter 4 and answer the question that follows.I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.“All right, you just keep it up then,” I said. “You’ll find out.”Atticus’s arrival was the second reason I wanted to quit the game. The first reason happened the day I rolled into the Radley front yard. Through all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing.How does ending the chapter with Scout hearing laughter from someone inside the Radley house move the story along? To create suspense and make the reader wonder who is laughing in the house. To give the reader doubt that what Scout hears is real and not just in her head. To foreshadow later events about the Radley house. All the above. 9. In Chapter 5 Scout and Miss Maudie talk about Foot-washing Baptists and Boo Radley. Read the following passage and answer the question.Miss Maudie grinned. “Thank you ma’am. Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know.”“Is that why Mr. Arthur stays in the house, to keep away from women?”“I’ve no idea.”“It doesn’t make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Arthur was hankerin‘ after heaven he’d come out on the porch at least. Atticus says God’s loving folks like you love yourself-”Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. “You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father.”I was shocked. “Atticus doesn’t drink whiskey,” I said. “He never drunk a drop in his life—nome, yes he did. He said he drank some one time and didn’t like it.”Miss Maudie laughed. “Wasn’t talking about your father,” she said. “What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”What does Miss Maudie mean when she says “sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of [someone else]”? Drinking whiskey is bad but not as bad as reading from the Bible. People who use the Bible for their own purpose and hurt others is worse than some people who get drunk. The Bible should not be read while drinking whiskey. Anything that is a pleasure is a sin. 10. Reread the following passage from Chapter 5 about the kids plan for giving Boo a note through the window:Jem was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing pole and stick it through the shutters. If anyone came along, Dill would ring the bell.Dill raised his right hand. In it was my mother’s silver dinner-bell.“I’m goin‘ around to the side of the house,” said Jem. “We looked yesterday from across the street, and there’s a shutter loose. Think maybe I can make it stick on the window sill, at least.”“Jem-”“Now you’re in it and you can’t get out of it, you’ll just stay in it, Miss Priss!”“Okay, okay, but I don’t wanta watch. Jem, somebody was-”“Yes you will, you’ll watch the back end of the lot and Dill’s gonna watch the front of the house an‘ up the street, an’ if anybody comes he’ll ring the bell. That clear?”“All right then. What’d you write him?”Dill said, “We’re askin‘ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there—we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice cream.”“You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”Dill said, “It’s my idea. I figure if he’d come out and sit a spell with us he might feel better.”“How do you know he don’t feel good?”“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin‘ but cats to eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to here-”“Like your daddy’s?”“He ain’t got a beard, he-” Dill stopped, as if trying to remember.“Uh huh, caughtcha,” I said. “You said ‘fore you were off the train good your daddy had a black beard-”“If it’s all the same to you he shaved it off last summer! Yeah, an‘ I’ve got the letter to prove it—he sent me two dollars, too!”“Keep on—I reckon he even sent you a mounted police uniform! That’n never showed up, did it? You just keep on tellin‘ ’em, son-”Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.Why do you think Dill tells lies? He tries to overcompensate for his not so great home life. He tends to over exaggerate the truth and wants attention. He has an overactive imagination and can’t stop himself from making up stories. All of the above. 11. Reread the following passage about the Jem going back for his pants in Chapter 6 :In the waning moonlight I saw Jem swing his feet to the floor.“I’m goin‘ after ’em,” he said.I sat upright. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”He was struggling into his shirt. “I’ve got to.”“You do an‘ I’ll wake up Atticus.”“You do and I’ll kill you.”I pulled him down beside me on the cot. I tried to reason with him. “Mr. Nathan’s gonna find ‘em in the morning, Jem. He knows you lost ’em. When he shows ‘em to Atticus it’ll be pretty bad, that’s all there is to it. Go’n back to bed.”“That’s what I know,” said Jem. “That’s why I’m goin‘ after ’em.”I began to feel sick. Going back to that place by himself—I remembered Miss Stephanie: Mr. Nathan had the other barrel waiting for the next sound he heard, be it nigger, dog... Jem knew that better than I.I was desperate: “Look, it ain’t worth it, Jem. A lickin‘ hurts but it doesn’t last. You’ll get your head shot off, Jem. Please...”He blew out his breath patiently. “I—it’s like this, Scout,” he muttered. “Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember. I wanta keep it that way.”Why is it important to Jem to get his pants before morning, even though the mission is dangerous? He knows he'll sleep better. He can’t afford another pair of pants. Atticus would then know that Jem was lying and disobeying hisprevious orders. And to Jem, being dishonored by his father was the worstconsequence. He might get a glimpse of Boo Radley while getting his pants back. 12. Reread the passage below from chapter 6 and answer the question that follows.Jem leaped off the porch and galloped toward us. He flung open the gate, danced Dill and me through, and shooed us between two rows of swishing collards. Halfway through the collards I tripped; as I tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood.Dill and Jem dived beside me. Jem’s breath came in sobs: “Fence by the schoolyard!—hurry, Scout!”Jem held the bottom wire; Dill and I rolled through and were halfway to the shelter of the schoolyard’s solitary oak when we sensed that Jem was not with us. We ran back and found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get loose. He ran to the oak tree in his shorts.Safely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Jem’s mind was racing: “We gotta get home, they’ll miss us.”We ran across the schoolyard, crawled under the fence to Deer’s Pasture behind our house, climbed our back fence and were at the back steps before Jem would let us pause to rest.Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we could to the front yard. We looked down the street and saw a circle of neighbors at the Radley front gate.“We better go down there,” said Jem. “They’ll think it’s funny if we don’t show up.”Mr. Nathan Radley was standing inside his gate, a shotgun broken across his arm. Atticus was standing beside Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie Crawford. Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None of them saw us come up.We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked around. “Where were you all, didn’t you hear the commotion?”“What happened?” asked Jem.“Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch.”“Oh. Did he hit him?”“No,” said Miss Stephanie. “Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one. Says he’s got the other barrel waitin‘ for the next sound he hears in that patch, an’ next time he won’t aim high, be it dog, nigger, or—Jem Finch!”“Ma’am?” asked Jem.Atticus spoke. “Where’re your pants, son?”“Pants, sir?”“Pants.”It was no use. In his shorts before God and everybody. I sighed.“Ah—Mr. Finch?”In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one: his eyes widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder.“What is it, Dill?” asked Atticus.“Ah—I won ‘em from him,” he said vaguely.“Won them? How?”Dill’s hand sought the back of his head. He brought it forward and across hisforehead. “We were playin‘ strip poker up yonder by the fishpool,” he said.Jem and I relaxed. The neighbors seemed satisfied: they all stiffened. But what was strip poker?We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the town fire siren: “Do-o-o Jee-sus, Dill Harris! Gamblin‘ by my fishpool? I’ll strip-poker you, sir!”Atticus saved Dill from immediate dismemberment. “Just a minute, Miss Rachel,” he said. “I’ve never heard of ‘em doing that before. Were you all playing cards?”Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No sir, just with matches.” I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.“Jem, Scout,” said Atticus, “I don’t want to hear of poker in any form again. Go by Dill’s and get your pants, Jem. Settle it yourselves.”“Don’t worry, Dill,” said Jem, as we trotted up the sidewalk, “she ain’t gonna get you. He’ll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin‘, son. Listen... you hear?”We stopped, and heard Atticus’s voice:“...not serious... they all go through it, Miss Rachel...”Make sure to answer both of these questions:What happens to Jem’s pants?What excuse does Dill make up to explain the situation?