Chapter 15

Key Events/Ideas 

• Dill gets to stay at the Finches 
• "placid" week in Maycomb – Jem helped Dill and Scout build a rope-ladder for the treehouse 

• Heck Tate and "mob" arrive to ask Atticus if they should move Tom Robinson to the county jail but Atticus doesn't want to because he wants the whole of Maycomb to see the trial 
• Jem thinks it is a dangerous mob and pretends that the telephone is ringing – men scatter 
• Atticus and Aunt Alexandra argue AGAIN – she is the only person he ever argues with 
• Atticus leaves the house to watch Tom Robinson and the mob arrive  
• Jem and Scout and Dill go to find Atticus and get caught up in the mob 

• While Atticus tries to make Jem take them home, Scout talks to Mr Cunningham about his entailment and his son 
• The mob breaks up and the children go home 
• Tom Robinson speaks for the first time 

Key Quotations 

• "That boy might go to the chair, but he's not going till the truth's told […] and you know what the truth is"  
• "they had been fussing again" 
• "A soft, husky voice" 
• "They've gone?" 

Context 

• Lynching – when 3 or more people (a mob) murder another person as part of tradition or their own judicial system separate from the law 
• NAACP trying to raise awareness of lynching in the 1920's and make it illegal 
• Previously, lynching had been used to enforce the law and both black and white people were lynched. However, after 1890, lynching became a racial issue and the number of black people being lynched had grown drastically over the number of white people lynched 
• "first class" citizenship was a privilege, not a right, so people were determined to lie their lives in a particular way to become "first class" citizens 

• whites believed and said that blacks were starting to devolve down the evolutionary scale because of social darwinism – white people were seen as pure 
• Concerns over the purity of white women and their sexual abstinence being ruined by black rapists 
• Ida memphis – very close freind of someone who had been lynched because he was succesfully competing with a white store-owner – found facts and became a reporter to disprove that rape was involved when people were lynched 
• Many blacks were involved in consensual relationships with white women and got lynched for it 
• Social darwinism  

• Black body parts from lynching were "cherished as family heirlooms" 

How does Harper Lee think mobs should be stopped? 

• Remind them of their humanity  
• When you're in the mob you are not a person you are just part of the mob 

• Jem – stops mob by saying that the telephone is ringing – reminds the men of ordinary life and they start laughing – scout suddenly realises "they were people they saw every day" and only now does she recognise them because they are no longer part of the mob 
• Sam Levy – tells mob that he "sold 'em the very sheets on their back" and reminded them of the kindness he had shown in the past – made them "ashamed"