Table of ContentsPrevious PageNext Page
Considering Competitive Colleges? Are You Prepared? Get a diagnostic from former top College Admissions Officers
Shmoop Partner
Advertisement

To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter Twenty-Three Summary

Chapter Twenty-Three

  • Atticus won’t say much about the attack other than to joke about it with dry wit.
  • Scout thinks Atticus should carry a gun, but he responds with calm unconcern.
  • Finally Atticus figures out that his kids are really terrified that Mr. Ewell will follow through on his threat, but Atticus thinks that Ewell’s done as much as he’s going to do, and after that the kids don’t feel scared any more.
  • Atticus tells Jem and Scout that nothing can happen to Tom until the appeal, which might have a better result than the original trial.
  • Tom is now at the Enfield Prison Farm seventy miles away, where his family can’t visit him.
  • Scout asks what will happen to Tom if he loses his appeal, and Atticus says he’ll go to the electric chair unless the governor grants him a stay of execution.
  • Jem says it’s not fair for Tom to get the death penalty since he didn’t kill anyone, and that the jury could have given him a prison sentence instead.
  • Atticus says that no Southern jury would convict an African-American man on a rape charge and give him anything less than death.
  • Jem replies that maybe rape shouldn’t be punishable by death then.
  • Atticus says that he doesn’t disagree with the sentencing recommendations for rape, but his beef is with sentencing a man to death on purely circumstantial evidence.
  • He goes on to say that the law requires a reasonable doubt to acquit someone, but he thinks that a shadow of a doubt should be enough – as long as there’s the possibility that the accused is innocent.
  • Jem then says that it’s the jury’s fault, and that maybe they should just get rid of juries.
  • Atticus answers that it would be better to change the law so that only judges could inflict the death penalty.
  • Jem thinks that’s a good idea, and tells Atticus he should make it happen, but Atticus says changing laws, like breaking up, is hard to do.
  • Jem still thinks that juries are a crock of @#$%, and Atticus tells him that if the jury had been made up of Jem and others like him, Tom would have been acquitted. He goes on to say that the jury left behind the written law to follow the unwritten one – that the white man always wins.
  • Atticus tells Jem and Scout that throughout their lives they’ll see plenty of instances of white men cheating black ones, but that any white man who does so is nothing more than trash.
  • He continues with an ominous prediction: “Don’t fool yourselves – it’s all adding up and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it” (23.41).
  • Jem asks why none of the townspeople like Miss Maudie ever get drafted for jury duty.
  • Atticus says that women aren’t allowed to be on juries, and that the rest either don’t want to lose business by taking sides, or are just to scared to stake out a definite position on an issue when so much depends on it.
  • Jem says that this particular jury didn’t waste any time staking out its position, but Atticus disagrees – like Miss Maudie, he thinks that the few hours the jury was out shows that the world might be shifting a little bit in the right direction.
  • Despite the supposed secrecy of jury deliberations, Atticus knows who kept the jury from convicting Tom right away: a cousin of Mr. Walter Cunningham, part of the group who wanted to lynch Tom when he was in the Maycomb jail the night before the trial but was turned back by Scout.
  • Scout decides to make friends with the younger Walter Cunningham when school starts up again, but Aunt Alexandra decrees that that Cunninghams are one class and the Finches another, and never the twain shall meet.
  • Scout remembers that Aunty reacted the same way when she wanted to visit Calpurnia at home, and decides not to give in so easily this time.
  • Aunt Alexandra finally says that the Cunninghams are trash and she doesn’t want Scout to pick up any more bad habits; at this Scout is ready to explode, but Jem gets her out of the room before she can jump on Aunt Alexandra.
  • Jem gives Scout a Tootsie Roll to calm her down (or at least shut her up by giving her a mouthful to chew on), and Scout notices that Jem looks different – he’s growing up.
  • Jem tries to show off his new chest hair; even though Scout can’t see anything, but she doesn’t tell him so.
  • Jem tells Scout that she shouldn’t let Aunt Alexandra annoy her, and Scout remembers when his advice was the other way around, and it was she who shouldn’t annoy Aunty.
  • Jem asks Scout if she can’t take up some kind of girly occupation to make Aunt Alexandra feel better, but Scout says she doesn’t want to and she doesn’t care what Aunty thinks.
  • Scout goes on to say that it wasn’t Aunt Alexandra’s comments about her that set her off, but her calling Walter trash, which she thinks puts him down to the level of the Ewells.
  • Jem says that he thinks he’s got it figured out, and there are four kinds of people: the ordinary (the Finches and their neighbors), the ones who live in the woods (the Cunninghams), the ones who live by the dump (the Ewells), and the African Americans, and everyone hates the ones a step below them.
  • Scout doesn’t quite buy it, and the pair try to puzzle out why Aunt Alexandra is so hung up on the notion of Family.
  • Scout finally concludes that people are just people and that’s all there is to it, and Jem says that’s what he used to think, but if it’s true, why can’t we all just get along?
  • The confusing way people act makes Jem think he finally understands why Boo Radley never comes out – because he wants to stay in, away from the weirdness that is humankind.