(21.48)Įven Atticus's talent for sharp-shooting can't do anything if the gun isn't loaded. A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. I saw something only a lawyer's child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty. In the previous instance, Atticus's skill with a gun was able to save the neighborhood from the mad dog will he be able to do the same this time? The same image recurs once more as the jury delivers their verdict. Why does Scout have this feeling? In both past and present, she's waiting for something to happen both times, she has no power over the outcome. A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doors of the Radley Place. Scout returns to this memory again when she's dozing off, waiting for the jury to announce its verdict in Tom's case: (He does later refer to the men in the lynch mob as "animals" ). Or of Atticus facing off with a mindless threat.
(16.3)īut why does Scout associate the two images? Perhaps they're both examples of Atticus doing tough things he doesn't want to do.
#Tim johnson to kill a mockingbird full#
The full meaning of the night's events hit me and I began crying. I was very tired, and was drifting into sleep when the memory of Atticus calmly folding his newspaper and pushing back his hat became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. But Scout's memory of her father shooting the dog does pop up more than once in situations involving Tom, and doesn't get mentioned otherwise.įor example, after Scout turns away the lynch mob, her memory of Atticus in front of the jail merges with her memory of him shooting the dog. Tim Johnson… Tom Robinson? Coincidence? Maybe. But more interestingly, it allows the dog's name to sound suspiciously like that of another character. Judge Taylor's pooch gets the same treatment. It may seem odd to give an animal the last name of the family it belongs to, but it's apparently common practice in Maycomb. Why? What did poor Tim the Dog ever do to get infected with rabies and be gunned down like, well, a dog?įor starters, there's his name. He was just snuffling along, investigating interesting smells, burying bones only to dig them up again, and looking out for lady dogs, when-bam-the symbolic structure of the book picks him up and decrees he has to die. (Click the symbolism infographic to download.)
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