Summary
Later that night, Atticus, Scout, Jem, and Dill walk home, and Miss Maudie approaches Atticus and commiserates over outcome of the trial. Atticus thanks Miss Maudie for her thoughtfulness, and suddenly Sheriff Tate comes through the neighborhood asking to speak with Atticus. While the two men converse, Miss Maudie goes to the dejected, confused children on the porch. She offers some wisdom and sympathy for Jem: “I don’t know if this will help, but I want to say this to you. There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.” Jem replies, “Oh, well.”
Sheriff Tate drives off, and Atticus moves forward to the group to deliver some horrifying news—Tom was shot to death while supposedly trying to escape jail. Defeated, Atticus laments, “The last thing I told him was not to lose heart, that we'd ask for an appeal. We had such a good chance. We had more than a good chance.” With Jem, Atticus then travels to the Robinson home to notify them of Tom’s unjust death. The family, which was optimistic about the appeal, is horrified to hear the news, especially Helen, who instantly collapses and sobs.
Mr. Ewell then walks up to Atticus and hatefully spits in his face. Silently enraged, Atticus steps forwards, glares at Ewell, wipes the spit from his face, and gets inside his car.
Time passes, and over voiceover, the adult version of Scout recollects, “By October, things had settled down again. I still looked for Boo every time I went by the Radley place. This night my mind was filled with Halloween. There was to be a pageant representing our county's agricultural products. I was to be a ham. Jem said he would escort me to the school auditorium. Thus began our longest journey together.”
After the agricultural pageant, Jem escorts Scout home. Scout has to wear her gigantic ham costume on the walk home, as she lost her dress and shoes. While the siblings walk through a dark wooded area, Jem continually stops; he hears heavy footsteps and believes someone is following them. Scout believes it’s simply Cecil Jacobs trying to scare them (she shouts, “Cecil Jacobs is a big wet hen!”). They begin to pick up their pace, with Jem guiding Scout with one hand placed on her costume.
A shadowy figure then growls and attacks Jem. Scout is thrown to the ground, unable to get out of her cumbersome costume. As Jem struggles against the attacker, he yells, “Run Scout!” but he becomes severely injured. The aggressor, Mr. Ewell, then attempts to murder Scout before another figure interferes and fights Ewell. Through the small peep-hole of the ham, Scout watches the brawl in horror. The fight reaches a climax followed by an eerie silence, and Scout spots the mysterious person carry home an unconscious Jem. Scout eventually gets free of her costume and follows them.
When Scout arrives home, Atticus runs down the porch, holds her in his arms, and asks her what happened. Scout replies, “I don’t know; I just don’t know” and Atticus asks Calpurnia to get a doctor and then notifies Tate of the incident (“Someone’s been after my children”). Minutes later, Dr. Reynolds diagnoses Jem—who’s unconsciously lying in bed—with a broken arm.
Tate enters the Finch household with Scout’s costume and reveals some shocking news: Bob Ewell has been stabbed to death under the ribs from a kitchen knife. Tate then asks Scout if she recalls what happened. She briefly shares what she remembers, and Tate asks her if she remembers who carried Jem home. Scout then notices someone hiding behind the bedroom door and says, “Why, there he is, Mr. Tate. He can tell you his name…”
Tate closes the bedroom door, unearthing a terrified, starkly pale man with blonde hair. He then gazes at Scout with a protective, tender look on his face. Scout curiously looks at the man before breaking out into a soft smile and realizing who the man is: Boo Radley, formerly the horrible figure of her imagination. She gently greets Boo with, “Hey, Boo.” Atticus then chimes in and introduces the two: “Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you.”
While Atticus and Tate leave for the porch to discuss the night’s events, Scout leads Arthur into Jem’s bedroom to say goodnight to him. She permits him to touch Jem, and the two of them then walk to the porch and peacefully sit on the swing.
Convinced that Jem killed Ewell, Atticus outlines the forthcoming defense for his son (“It’ll have to come before the County Court. Of course, it’s a clear-cut case of self-defense”). Tate interrupts Atticus and says, “Mr. Finch, do you think Jem killed Bob Ewell? Is that what you think? Your boy never stabbed him” and the two men then gaze over at Boo. Tate recognizes the difficulty of the situation, but ultimately believes that Boo, a severe recluse, would not survive all the unwanted attention and notoriety if he was to be charged for murder.
In an attempt to excuse his mistakes during the Tom Robinson case, Tate proposes to protect Boo from the limelight and fabricates a story: a drunk Ewell fell on his own knife and died. In a stunning monologue, Tate suspects that Atticus may not want to participate in the suppression of the truth, but stands by his story, stating, “There's a black man dead for no reason, and now the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. I never heard tell it was against the law for any citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did. But maybe you'll tell me it's my duty to tell the town all about it, not to hush it up...To my way of thinkin', takin' one man who's done you and this town a big service, and draggin' him, with his shy ways, into the limelight, to me, that's a sin. It's a sin, and I'm not about to have it on my head. I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still Sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife.” Tate exits the porch.
Scout walks over to her father and expresses her agreement with Tate. With a newfound maturity, Scout claims that subjecting Boo to a public prosecution “would be sort of like shooting a mockingbird.” The father and daughter then hug each other tightly.
Arthur rises from the swing and peers into Jem’s window. Atticus walks over to him and shakes his hand, expressing his gratitude with, “Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for my children.”
Arthur and Scout then walk to the Radley property, hand in hand. Over voice-over, the older Scout provides the remainder of the film’s dialogue. She conveys her appreciation for Boo: "Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.” As Arthur goes inside his house, Scout stays on the porch for a few moments, viewing the world from Boo’s perspective. The older Scout again chimes in: “One time Atticus said you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them. Just standin' on the Radley porch was enough. The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out.” As the young Scout modestly walks home, the adult Scout admits how she often recollects on these fragile and eventful memories of her childhood, finally noting that Atticus would be at an injured Jem’s side all night.
Analysis
The tense, riveting last part of To Kill a Mockingbird is full of suspenseful plot twists and a powerful ending, all the while deepening the characterizations of Arthur and Scout and fully realizing the theme of empathy.
The section essentially begins with a disillusioned Jem, whose fundamental faith in human goodness is shattered at the hands of the jury’s verdict. Jem has received a supreme moral education from Atticus and knows the difference between right and wrong, so when he witnesses the jury deliberately make a morally wrong decision, his value system is thrown into disarray. Sensing Jem’s disappointment, Miss Maudie offers a simple but profound appreciation for his father: “There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.” By choosing to focus on Atticus’s commendable defense of Tom, as opposed to the hopelessness of the verdict, Miss Maudie shows her similarities with Atticus. Instead of harping on the unfortunate outcome of the trial, she decides to praise the humanity and integrity of one of her fellow human beings: Atticus. Also, by asserting that Atticus was born to be a defense attorney—one of “our unpleasant jobs,” rewarded only with disappointment and injustice—she highlights the excellent work Atticus provides to the community, and how he exemplifies justice in the American legal system.
The jury spent hours deliberating the case’s verdict, which implies the jurors fervently debated the case with each other, and some of the white farm folk had their own perceptions of race challenged and changed. By even addressing the prejudice of many of Maycomb’s townspeople, Atticus ultimately used his profession to make people think about race and inequality—two phenomena previously suppressed by the community. Thus, the overarching significance of Atticus’s defense is perhaps not wholly nullified by the spiteful verdict of the jury, and Miss Maudies wishes to communicate these ideas to Jem. Jem’s loss of innocence has resulted in a jaded cynicism, which explains his dismissive reply: “Oh, well.”
To show the ugly depths behind the seemingly languid, idyllic setting of Maycomb—a town suffused with depravity, racism, abuse, and abject poverty—Mulligan adopts Southern Gothic details as one of the film’s motifs. Southern Gothic works often feature grotesque characters, misleading settings, and morbid, bleak themes. Throughout the film, Mulligan incorporates these features in the film’s narrative: the children’s macabre obsession with Arthur/“Boo,” the rabid dog, and, most notably, Scout and Jem’s ominous walk through the woods on Halloween night. Between the rustling of the trees, the heavy adult footsteps behind them, the dreadfully slow pace, and dramatic use of low-key lighting, the Gothic details of this sequence elicit a powerful sense of unease and enable audiences to anticipate that the children will undergo a traumatic event. Scout hears the sounds of the pursuer and presumes it to be one of her enemies, Cecil Jacobs, only to discover that she and Jem in grave danger. Because the attack occurs close by to their house in an area they once deemed safe—and Scout is in an awkward, cumbersome costume that prevents her from seeing the attack—the children have never been more vulnerable in the entire film, which underlines the cowardliness of Ewell. Ewell would never attempt to kill Atticus, the best shot in Maycomb, so he directs his maliciousness onto their children at their most defenseless. The attack deepens the characterization of Ewell and reveals his all-encompassing, vile loathsomeness.
Luckily, though, someone steps in and saves the children: Arthur “Boo” Radley. Throughout the early sections of the film, Jem and Scout view Arthur as a terrifying monster down the street; the vicious town gossip and the mysterious atmosphere of the Radley house make Arthur into the main subject on the children’s preoccupations and fantasies. However, for the vast majority of the film, the children never make an effort to know Arthur or consider his destitute living situation: he has been imprisoned in his own house, and his father literally cuts off any communication he has with the outside world with cement (with the knothole in Part 3).
So, when the protective and loving Arthur saves the children and defies their preconceived notions about him, Scout learns the value of compassion. Once she realizes Arthur was her guardian angel, he transitions from Boo, the elusive, menacing phantom, to Arthur, a human being. As Scout breaks out into a gentle smile and greets Arthur with “Hey, Boo,” she takes a huge leap in the moral development of her character; she realizes her perceptions of Boo Arthur were naive but misguided (without explicitly admitting her error in judgment). Her moral development also begins to peak when she hypothetically equates the subjecting of Boo to the horrors of a public prosecution to the killing of a mockingbird. Here, she has not appropriate Atticus’s words, but also his moral outlook on the world, which emphasizes sympathy and understanding a person’s point of view. After recognizing the depraved and abused life Arthur has lived, Scout sees the world through his eyes and acknowledges that the sinful explosure would destroy the man, an innocent “mockingbird” whose encounters with evil deprive him of living a meaningful, average life. All of Scout’s previous experiences, from witnessing the Tom Robinson trial to Atticus’s lesson's on moral education, have led to this enriching, gripping moment. Arthur has become a human being to Scout, but he also proves Scout’s—and the film’s—grasp on humanity: goodness can manifest in unexpected and powerful forms, just like evil.
The film concludes on the young Scout lingering for a few moments on the Radley porch, with the older Scout thematically expanding on the scene with, “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” In her awakening intelligence and maturity, Scout understands that Arthur has provided nurture and protection to her for the past two years, in spite of his restrained, oppressive life. His goodness shines through, and Scout begins to empathize with his point of view and life experiences as she stands on the porch. She imagines how he has viewed the film’s tumultuous events—the shooting of the rabid dog, the Tom Robinson trial, Scout, Jem, and Dill’s rebellious visits to his house, his attempts to communicate with the children—from his own eyes. The blossoming of Scout’s emotional capacity to assume a different person’s perspective marks the final culmination of her personal character development, as well as the end note of central theme of the film: the fundamental need for empathy.
