To Kill A Mockingbird: Excerpts of Boo Radley
English 9
Mrs. Thomas
Text to Speech
You can use Text To Speech to have the computer read the story out loud to you.
Click on the text to speech icon and then click where you want to read.Use the green arrow to start reading, and click on the red square to stop reading.
Vocabulary
In the excerpts, you will see words that are underlined with a dotted line. This is a hyperlink to the glossary. You can click on any underlined word to see its definition instantly.
If you are unsure of any other words, you can use the online dictionary at www.dictionary.com
Coaches
In this book you will see coaches. They will ask you questions about the text and give you ideas and models for how to answer them.
Response Areas
You will notice that there are places for you to write your responses to the questions or take notes. Anything you type there will be TEMPORARILY saved while you are reading the story. Make sure to COPY the work onto your notes page before you leave the story.
Boo Radley
Directions: Read the excerpt from Chapter 1 of To Kill A Mockingbird. Record quotes from the text in your chart, that show stereotypes and assumptions about Boo Radley (Arthur Radley).
When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose's house two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south.
The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate. There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole, staring and wondering.
The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate -gray yard around it. Rain-rottedshingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda ; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard- a "swept" yard that was never swept.
Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom . People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people's chickens and household pets were found mutilated ; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker's Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked.
The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb's principal recreation , but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle.
Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries.
The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb's ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only.
According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams...They did little, but enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits : they hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and went to the picture show ; they attended dances at the county's riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boy was in with the wrong crowd.
One night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backed around the square in a borrowed flivver , resisted arrest by Maycomb's ancient beadle , Mr. Conner, and locked him in the courthouse outhouse . The town decided something had to be done...so the boys came before the judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery , and using abusive and profane language in the presence and hearing of a female. If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley's word was his bond, the judge was glad to do so. The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley's boy was not seen again for fifteen years.
But there came a day, barely within Jem's memory, when Boo Radley was heard from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune¯ to paste in his scrapbook . His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent's leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.
Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up the Tribune. He was thirty-three years old then.
The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder.
"Wonder what he does in there," he would murmur . "Looks like he'd just stick his head out the door."
Jem said, "He goes out, all right, when it's pitch dark. Miss Stephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight through the window at her... said his head was like a skull lookin' at her. Ain't you ever waked up at night and heard him, Dill? He walks like this-" Jem slid his feet through the gravel. "Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight at night? I've seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin', and one night I heard him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus got there."
"Wonder what he looks like?" said Dill.
Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.
"Let's try to make him come out," said Dill. "I'd like to see what he looks like."
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door.