To Kill a Mockingbird Chapter 4 Summary
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Setting
Chapter 4 of To Kill a Mockingbird is set at the Radley Place
Main Characters
Scout- she is originally known as jean Louise finch but uses the nickname scout. Scout is the daughter of Atticus finch and is nearly six years old when the story begins. She is a tomboy, eager, inquisitive and observant.
Jem- Jeremy Atticus finch, also known as Jem is scout’s older brother who is 10 as the novel begins. He is wildly imaginative and as curious as a scout.
Atticus- Atticus finch is a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama. He is a widowed father to Jem and scout.
Calpurnia- she has been a cook at the finch house since Jem was born. She becomes a mother figure to Jem and scout after the death of their mother.
Dill- he is also known as Charles Baker Harris and is the six-year-old nephew of Rachel Haverford, the next door neighbor of the finches’.
Bob Ewell- he is the father of Mayella Ewell and the accuser of tom Robinson.
Tom Robinson- he is the black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell.
Plot Summary
The rest of Scout’s school year precedes much like her first day. She cannot help but think she is missing something since Atticus was educated at home, not with the Dewey Decimal System, and he has been elected to the state legislature unopposed for years. Scout gets out of school 30 minutes before Jem, so she races past Radley Place. One afternoon, something catches her eye and she returns to one of the big oak trees in the Radley yard. In a knothole, she finds two pieces of chewing gum in tinfoil, which, after checking to make sure they’re not poisonous, she shoves in her mouth.
On the last day of school, Jem and Scout get out early. They discuss Dill’s impending arrival and as they pass the Radley Place, Scout points to the knothole. There is more tinfoil in it, and this time, Jem pulls out a shiny package. At home, Jem finds a ring box containing two polished Indian head pennies. They deliberate over whether to keep them and wonder if Cecil Jacobs might be hiding things in the knothole, but they reason that Cecil goes an extra mile per day to avoid the Radley Place and mean Mrs. Dubose. They decide to keep them until school starts again in case they belong to a classmate. Scout points out that nobody would want to save chewing gum, but Jem insists that the pennies are important to someone since Indian head pennies are magic.
Dill arrives two days later on the train. He announces that he rode the train, helped the engineer and that he met his father over the school year. The children squabble over what to play and Dill sniffs, declaring he can smell death at the Radley Place. They argue over whether Hot Steams are real and Scout insults Jem’s courage. Scout suggests they roll in the tire, which Jem and Dill agree to. Scout goes first and folds herself into the tire. She only realizes once Jem pushes her with all his might that Jem was offended by her insult. As the tire rolls, Scout feels like she’s suffocating. She crashes and finds herself on her back in the Radley front yard. Jem screams at her to run.
Scout runs on wobbly legs back to Jem and Dill and then argues with Jem about who should get the tire. Jem is furious, but he dashes in to get the tire and insults Scout for acting too much like a girl. Calpurnia calls them in for lemonade and as they sit on the porch, Jem announces expansively that they can play Boo Radley. Scout knows this is supposed to make him look fearless and her look scared. He doles out parts and tells off Scout for being scared of Boo, whom he insists is dead. Their game evolves over the summer and though Jem and Dill love it, Scout plays anxiously.
The play draws from neighborhood gossip. Dill plays villains, and for once Scout gets a good part when she plays the judge. Jem steals Calpurnia’s scissors daily so he can mime stabbing Dill in the leg, and the children stand silent when Nathan Radley passes or when they catch neighbors watching. One day, they don’t notice Atticus watching. Jem evasively insists that they are not playing anything. Atticus shrewdly takes the scissors and asks if their game has to do with the Radleys. Jem insists it doesn’t, and Atticus tells them it should not as he enters the house. Scout hisses that Atticus knows, but Jem accuses her of being a girl and imagining things. She does not tell him that she is anxious because, on the day she rolled into the Radley yard, she heard someone laughing.
Themes
- Prejudice. Prejudice is shown in the novel by the many people living in Maycomb being racists and prejudiced against black people.
- Good, Evil, and Human Dignity. The novel follows Scout, a precocious six-year-old, over the course of three years as she begins to grow, and in the process, bears witness to the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. As a child, Scout has set ideas regarding what’s good and what’s evil, but throughout the novel, her father, Atticus, gradually begins to encourage her to see that the world is not divided into good people and bad people. Rather, he suggests to her that all people are composed of a mix of good and bad qualities, but regardless, everyone is deserving of being treated with dignity and respect.
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