To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 31 Summary

Scout is surprised that the long-dreamed-of Boo Radley is actually next to her in the flesh.
Boo nods towards the front door, and Atticus asks him to come in to say goodnight to Jem.
They go into Jem’s room, where Aunt Alexandra is sitting, and Scout leads Boo to Jem’s bed.
Boo looks at Jem with curiosity – “as though had never seen a boy before” (31.9), Scout thinks – and Scout encourages him to pet Jem’s head while he’s asleep and can’t make a fuss about it.
Scout, who’s becoming sensitive to Boo’s mute communications, realizes he wants to leave, so she leads him to the front porch.
He asks her a in a quiet voice to take her home, and together they walk arm-in-arm to the Radley Place.
As they walk Scout thinks of all the time they spent on this street thinking about Boo.
Boo goes inside, and Scout never sees him again.
Scout thinks about everything Boo had given them over the years, and is sad to realize that they had never given him anything in return.
Scout turns to leave, and sees her neighborhood with fresh eyes from this spot where she’s never stood before.
She shifts slightly to stand in front of the shuttered window next to the front door, and imagines how the events of the past few years would have appeared to Boo from this window – how Boo would have looked on her, and Jem, and Atticus.
Scout thinks about how Atticus always says you need to stand in a man’s shoes before you can understand him, and how standing on the Radley porch helps her understand Boo.
Scout walks home through the rain and thinks of how much she has to tell Jem, and how sore he’s going to be that he was unconscious through the whole thing.
Scout thinks that she and Jem may have some more growing to do, but there’s not much left for them to learn, except maybe algebra.
At home, Scout runs to Jem’s room and finds Atticus there, reading.
Atticus tells her that Jem won’t be awake till morning and it’s time for her to go to bed.
Scout asks if she can sit up with him, and he lets her.
Feeling sleepy already, Scout asks Atticus about his book, and he tells her that it’s one of Jem’s – The Gray Ghost.
Scout asks him to read it out loud because it’s nice and scary, but Atticus says that she’s had enough scaring tonight.
Scout says she wasn’t scared – or at least not until she started telling the story of what happened – and that only books are really scary.
Atticus starts reading aloud, and Scout falls asleep.
Later Atticus puts Scout to bed, and a dozy Scout mutters that she heard every word of the story – about how they chased Stoner’s Boy but they couldn’t catch him because they’d never seen him, and when they found him he wasn’t bad at all, but “real nice” (31.53)
Atticus tells her: “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them” (31.55).
He goes back to Jem’s room, where he will stay for the whole night, and “he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning” (31.56).

Themes

Chapter 30