Journal #7, Chapters 25-28, Perspective of Scout

I don’t know what to think of Jem these days. I mean he will be all friendly with me, and then in the next second, he will be angry with me and send me out of the room. It’s even worse when Atticus tells me to leave him alone, when I’m not doing anything in the first place. For example, I was in my room and I was laying on my cot when I see a little rolliepollie walking across the floor with all 100 legs, when I touch it and it rolls up into a ball. I guess they do that for protection. To save them selves when there isn’t really anything to be afraid of, just like how Jem is afraid of Atticus getting hurt or something else happening to him. Or like the Tom Robinson case and how just yesterday, Tom Robinson, had to go hopping over that fence to just get shot in the act. Anyway, Jem tells me to quit bugging the bug and go to sleep, when I tell him that he is just turning into a little girl, even though I am suppose to be the lady not Jem.

Aunt Alexandra really has no purpose of being here any longer because he has already turned someone into a girl and that was her goal all along. I know it was an obscure idea of her to think that she would actually succeed in doing so, into turning me into a lady, but I cant really blame her for trying to help me and Jem out.

This town is really messed up sometimes. Tom Robinson, a very nice man, was accused of something he didn’t even do in the first place. But, it was his idea to jump over the fence and practically kill himself. And Mayella, she is a real big hypocrite because she said that he raped her but in reality she kissed him and she got beat up by her father for doing that. I also know that it was improbable for Tom to win the case because it was white against black, but the jury knew that they didn’t have enough evidence and that they weren’t even sticking with the lie that they had created. I know that the whole town of Maycomb will sustain Tom Robinson's name forever and treasure it as a hero for the whole town to see.

The summer went by very quick and now I was going to start 3rd grade. I was in Miss Gates class and she has introduced something to the class that most of us have never heard of before, and that was current events. You know like something you find in the newspaper that is news to everybody, all over the world. Many people brought in their current events and they were all about things that I didn’t really understand but there was one by Cecil Jacobs that stood out to me the most and his was about Hitler taking all of the Jews and locking them up in cages. Miss Gates talked to us about what was happening in Europe at the time and how Hitler and his army were treating the Jews. The whole class made an assessment about Hitler and we all agreed that it isn’t right to treat them like that, just because of their religion. I went home that night and told Atticus all about Hitler and what he was doing; Atticus only said that you couldn’t judge someone by what they do even if it is really bad. I didn’t really understand why because Miss. Gates Judged Hitler and she didn’t mind it at all. I just don’t know what to think now, about everything, Jem, Tom Robinson, Miss Gates or Atticus. I guess I will just have to see what life throws at me next.

Journal #6, Chapers 16-19, Perspective of Atticus

Today was the big day. The day where I would either fail or succeed, the day that Tom Robinson will be noticed for the man that he is and the day that will affect my entire life. This court case, is riding on my shoulders, many people have ignored me, and I have been called bad names but that will not stop me from defending this man. Some people have been irrelevant with the situation that is at hand and now I am bringing this case to the front and I am going to make this court case seem subsequent.

When I walk into the courtroom I see all of the people coming to watch and I also see all of the jury members sitting in their chairs waiting to decide what is in store for me and for Tom Robinson. To win this case I am going to have to be stealth and I am going to have to use all of my knowledge to get us through this. I am worried though, about Scout and Jem because this court case wont just affect me, it will effect them to and I don’t want that to happen. Even though Tom is a Negro and a pauper I don’t want people to look down on him because of that. The trial is about to start and I am as nervous as ever when Mr. Heck Tate comes to the stand. While I am questioning him we find out that he has all of his facts straight and that Mr. Ewell ran in to go and get him after Mayella got beat up. He seemed to know what he was saying and I know that he won’t be very helpful to try and prove the real part of the case. The next person up is Mr. Ewell and I am very curious to see what he has to say about this. When he first gets up their Mr. Gilmer examines him and then it is my turn to cross-examine. I was wondering how I was going to come about this all day but I guess I was just going to have to wing it. Before I started I knew that Mr. Ewell was going to be the opposite of a predicament person.

I asked him basic questions, and every answer was the same thing that Mr. Gilmer had said before he came to the stand and I had to get more from him. The person that had to of hit Mayella had to be left handed and Tom’s left hand was deformed. I asked him if he could write his name for us and when he started writing he used his left hand, so I had evidence that Mr. Ewell had punched his daughter. Next up was Mayella and I knew that this was going to be hard. When I started I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to tell the truth, she was only going to say the things that Mr. Gilmer told her to say, so it was going to be hard to get something out of her. She was scared of me and that made it harder to answer the questions that I asked her. When we were done the only thing that I concluded to was that she wasn’t really sure what she was talking about. I had everything I needed, to examine Tom when the courtroom called a 10-minute break. When it was over Tom went to the stand and I asked him all questions necessary, in order to make sure the jury knew that Tom would tell them the whole truth. He told his side of the story and it sounded way more convincing then Mayella. Then it was Mr. Gilmer’s turn to cross-examine, his side made Tom feel uncomfortable by the questions he was asking. Tom stuck to the correct story and I felt glad when Mr. Gilmer was done. I don’t know how the case will come out, or what it will do to Tom or I but I know that I jut had to be the great lawyer that I know I am.

Journal #5, Chapters 13-15, Perspective of Scout

I can’t believe that Aunt Alexandra is going to stay with us, I wouldn’t mind if she came to visit every once in a while. But when she said that she was going to stay with us for a while I got worried. In Maycomb a little while could be anywhere from 3 days to 3 years. I think that she is coming because she wants to turn me into a lady, that likes clothes and boys and I think that she is trying to turn Jem into an older adult.

Aunt Alexandra has adapted extremely well to Maycomb. She talks to people like she has known them for her whole life, she treats us like she is our mom, and she is trying to get rid of Cal. I heard Atticus talking with Aunt Alexandra and she thinks that Cal should leave because she can take the place of her. I have gotten a lot closer to Cal, and I think of her more then a cook, I think of her as a really good friend. Aunt Alexandra has also brought strange cousins that I have never met before into our house for tea over the summer. I think that Aunt Alexandra needs to go back to her home with Uncle Jack, because we were doing just fine without her and I don’t think that she is needed her at all.

Another problem has occurred. One night I was talking with Jem for a little and then we got into a fight and Atticus told us both to go and get in bed. When I was walking in my dark room I stepped on something, but I had no clue what it was. Jem went downstairs to get a broom and to really see if there was anything under my bed, and there was, it was Dill. I had a feeling he was going to have some fantastic story for me about how he escaped a prison where his father put him or something else like that. He didn’t though, he stole 30 dollars from his mom and rode on a train to get here, just as simple as that, no escaping or anything along with his story. After a pleading letter to his mother he was allowed to stay one week before having to go back home. The time that Dill spent with me was great, we stayed out of Aunt Alexandra’s way, and Jem was to old to play with us but he did help us put a new ladder on the tree house.

One evening Atticus was called outside by a whole bunch of men from town and they were all standing around him in a circle. I could hear the conversation but I had no clue what they were talking about. I think it had to do something with the court case, and Tom. Something scares me about them and I don’t know what is going to happen to Atticus or Tom. Later that night Atticus told us that he was going to town and won’t be back till were asleep. I don’t know what to think of that but I have a feeling that it isn’t a good thing. Jem awoke me with the light in his room and I asked him what he was doing and he said that he was going into town to go and look for Atticus and I told him that I was coming with him no madder what. He gave up and said that I could come and on the way we stopped by Dill’s house and asked if he wanted to come. We entered town and saw Atticus leaning against the jailhouse. We waited there hiding and saw many cars coming all in a row, they parked right in front of the court house and got out in pairs of two or three. They were talking for a while when I decide to run to him. When I got there I realized that I didn’t know any of them besides Mr. Cunningham and he didn’t seem to know me. I stood quiet for a while when they all left the same way that they came. I didn’t know what to think of that night or what to expect from those men but I know that everything will turn out all right in the end.

Journal #4, Chapters 10-12, Perspective of Mrs. Dubose

I am not very fond of the Finches, and for that matter, everyone else on the block. I am an old woman that lives by myself and many people contradict me for who I actually am. I don’t like to be thought as a mean person I just say what I believe is wrong and what is right. I fell that I am inconspicuous with everyone in this whole stupid town.

I hate the Finches, Scout, Jeremy and Atticus for everything that they have done to me and to this town. I hate Scout because she is a lady that shouldn’t be wearing overalls, she should be wearing a dress and playing with dolls. Scout also acts like her contemporaries are the same as Jem even though she is way younger. Scout doesn’t respect me or mostly anyone else and another thing, is that she calls her father Atticus and not dad. I dislike Jem because he is a snotty little boy who doesn’t understand most things, and he acts like he knows it all, but the worst of them all is Atticus. He is a lawyer and he defends people but he shouldn’t be defending a Negro in a court case against a white person. I am not the only one that thinks this and I don’t think I will ever be when Atticus loses that court case. This just shows how bad the Finches are.

One afternoon I see Jem and Scout walking past my house and I start telling them about their dad and other things about them. They are walking past me like I am inaudible, and that they don’t even care what I am saying. Till they stop and they are yelling at me and I am an old women trying to defend myself. When Scout and Jem walk away I can see the peril in Jem’s eyes. I decide to go back into my house and take a nap. An hour and a half pass when I hear a ruckus outside and I wonder if Jem had come back to mess with me, so I waited inside my house till he was out of sight.

I stepped out onto my porch and all of my flowers have been destroyed, pots were lying on the floor and I could see the flower petals scattered on my porch. I didn’t know what to say to this but on Atticus trip down to his house I stopped him and told Jem everything that he had done. Atticus had assured me that he was going to send Jem back here and I can think of a punishment. Day after day I have the same stupid routine, and I wanted to mix it up a little bit. I don’t know how to read because I just never learned how to, and that is when I came up with the perfect punishment for Jem.

Everyday since a month ago I have been making Jem come and read to me for the afternoon. I zone out whenever he is here and I don’t listen to the things that he is reading or any other things that he might of said all of those afternoons. The month had come to an end when I still wanted at least one more week, with him reading to me. He did and when his time had come I knew that it was going to get very lonely in this place again.

A month later I knew my days were over, one thing that I did hope though was that the world kept moving when I had passed away, I felt that the world was coming to an end. I called Atticus over to tell him some of my finial words and then…

Journal #3, Chapters 8-9, Perspecitve of Scout

One morning I was getting up and getting ready to go to school when I look outside and I see white stuff all over the floor. It is beautiful, mysterious and yet it scares me out of my mind. I start yelling and Attics comes to me and asks me what is wrong, he also says that it is just snow and that there is nothing to worry about. I go down stairs where Jem is also looking at the ‘snow.’ I have never seen such strange stuff in my life and I get worried to what it will do to me. Jem and I decide to go outside and decide how snow works, we take very light steps and it squishes down when I step on it. Jem tells me that we should try and make a snowman, but I don’t have any idea what that is.

Attics tells us that a snowman is snowballs stacked on top of each other but he has no idea how to make one because he has never been in snow before. Jem says that we should go to Ms. Maudie’s yard and collect more snow. When we get over there Mr. Nathan is there and he says to us that this is our fault. Mr. Nathan thinks that when kids misbehave it effects the weather and earth. I believe him too because the things that he says may be made up but they seem true and most of the time he has proof, I never try debating with him, it doesn't seem worth it. The we look over and see Ms. Maudie in her yard with plastic bags covering her plants.

“What are you doing Ms. Maudie?” I ask very perplexed. She doesn’t respond right away because I can tell that she is very busy and she is one of the best gardeners that I have ever known.

“I have to cover my azaleas otherwise they will freeze!” She responses while getting right back to work.

“Do you mind if we take your snow?” Jem asks.

“Heavens alive, take it all!” Ms. Maudie responds in a very relived tone. She also entrusted me with her baskets that we could fill the snow up in.

Jem and I collect all of the snow from Ms. Maudie’s yard and from are yard, including a whole bunch of dirt. Ms. Maudie's yard and ours look isolated compared to all of the other houses on the block. Jem and I start building the snowman and it takes us a while but after when we are done we step back and look at what we have created we see that it looks exactly like Mr. Nathan. When Attics comes home he says that we need to hide the fact that it looks just like him. We leave it there then to go and get some hot chocolate inside.

Jem and I both go to sleep that night very happy when I am awoken by Attics at 1:00 in the morning. I am filled with questions and nobody is giving me any answers. When we walk outside I am adjacent with Jem, I see Ms. Maudie’s house and flames are coming from her dinning room, I see many people helping to get all of her stuff out of the house and Attics tells Jem and I to go sit in front of the Radleys house and wait. We sat there for most of the morning, watching the fire go down and many fire trucks coming. I was freezing sitting there in the cold early in the morning. When it is all over and Ms. Maudie is safe and she is staying at Ms. Rachel’s, we go back home to sleep. Before we do though Attics asks whose blanket was wrapped around me and he new the answer but didn’t want to tell me he wanted me to think about it and where we were sitting at. I finally realized that when we were watching the fire Boo Radley came out of his house and put the blanket over my shoulders and left. I didn’t know what to say after that, but I did know that I still wanted to know more about the mysteries of Boo Radley.

Journal #2, Chapters 4-7, Perspecive of Ms. Maudie Atkins

Every year over the summer time my nephew comes to live with me. That time is one of the happiest times of my life because he brings joy into my house and I love him as if he were I own son. Scout and Jem have also gown very fond of Dill, everyday they would go play their imaginary games and sometimes I wondered what they were doing. Every year, when he came down, he was like a chameleon because he kept changing, physically and emotionally. Dill is a happy boy and the time that he will come keeps teetering back and forth, until today.

Dill comes all by himself and right when I saw him I squeezed him and never wanted to let him go. But of course the first thing he wanted to do was to see Scout and Jem. I have nothing against either one of them, but I wish he would want to spend more time with me. Since they make up these very partially strange games Dill and Jem grew closer and closer together and they started tormenting Scout. Which made Scout feel left out and every once and a while when I was gardening or doing something Scout would stroll by looking for someone to talk to or play with. When I would talk to Scout she was very curious about Mr. Arthur, she called him Boo of course but that wasn’t his real name. I told her all the stories and the things I knew about Mr. Arthur, his childhood and just different things about him.

I do feel bad of course for Scout and Jem because their father is never with them and he doesn’t act like a father around them either. They try quibbling him, and they don’t even call him dad, he lets them call him Attics. There is also something about Jem, I know he isn’t malignant, but he acts that way with the Radley’s place. Jem is very mysterious with everything, he hides the games he plays and he always looks like he is up to no good. Sometimes I question if I should let Dill play with Jem.

The end of the summer has come, and this is the saddest part of the year for me because Dill is leaving me and I will be alone again. The evening was going very smooth so far, when Jem, Scout and Dill all asked if they could go on a little walk. I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with that so I let them go. I hope that they weren’t going to make a tyranny decision, or do something bad on Dill’s last night here. I went over and started talking to Attics for a while, and we just talked about basic things like Dills departure and Jem. When all of a sudden we hear a gate shutter and different noises coming from the Radley place. We all are worried now because Jem, Scout, and Dill aren’t here and Dill can’t possibly get in trouble the last day that he is here. A couple minutes later we hear more noises but they are louder and then behind us are Dill, Scout and Jem. I was so worried about them that I took Dill aside and asked him basic questions.

I knew they did it, I knew they wanted to see Mr. Arthur the last day that Dill was here and I also wondered why Jem didn’t have his pants on. Dill said that they were playing poker for clothes and that just pushed me off the edge and I was going to tell his mother, but that would cause more drama then actually needed. Jem, Scout and Attics went home for the night ad I was getting ready to put Dill on the train to go back home till next summer. I will miss him truly but I can hold out until next summer.

Journal #1, Chapters 1-3 in the perspective of Ms Caroline.

My first day of teaching in Maycomb, Alabama was the hardest day I have ever had to teach. All of the kids are different then what I’m used to, the community is very, very small and everyone knows everybody else. I have learned a lot from my 1st grade class and I think that I will have to change myself to fit in with this community.

Before class I planned out exactly what we were going to do. I decided that I would read them a story about talking cats. Before class actually started I thought that it would be a great idea, when the kids walked in I introduced myself and told them a little bit about me. I started reading the story when I noticed that they were all squirming around in there chairs and realized that, for there lives they have all picked cotton and done whatever there parents needed help with. They couldn’t picture what I was reading so I decided to move on with the day. That is when I asked a little girl named Scout to read, My First Reader and The Mobile Register out loud.

She all ready knows how to read and write and we discourage that from such a young age. I don’t know much else about her but I can feel that she wont be an easy one to teach. I first had to give her some pats on the hand because she can read and write. Her dad is teaching her and he isn’t suppose to, that is the 3rd grade teacher’s job. I can see that Scout is very smart for her age but I feel that she will be a handful this year.

During recess I thought to my self and maybe these kids are ready to start reading, and I will just teach the basics. When they sat in silence I saw Scout writing a letter and I was appalled, to see a first grader writing a letter. I was going to have to talk to her parents about this because this isn’t acceptable. I told her that we print and not write in the first grade. I don’t know what I am going to do to Scout but I will deal with that after lunch.

For lunch some kids go home and others stay at school and eat. I asked who goes home to eat lunch, and many kids raised their hands. Kids who were staying put their lunches on their desks and I walked past Walter Cunningham and asked him where his lunch was. Walter has hookworms from his lack of shoes, and he was very skinny. Walter said, “Yeb’m,” and so I went to my purse and handed him a quarter, but he refused it.

From a distance I heard someone say, “Come on tell her, Scout.” Then the weirdest thing happened. Scout just stood up and said that he is a Cunningham and sat back down. I didn’t even know what to say to that, so I demanded an explanation. Scout told me the meanest things about Walter and his family and I couldn’t even explain how terrible she described them. So I took her back to my desk and gave her 12 little pats on the hand for what she said. From then on I know that Scout has a lot to learn in life.

When we came back from lunch I was screaming at a bug coming out of Burris’s Ewell hair. All of the kids comforted me and told me that it was just a cootie and there was nothing to worry about. I told Burris to go home and take a bath and to come back tomorrow. He was so filthy, the backs of his hands were rusty and his fingernails were black. Burris stood up and said, “You ain’t sendin’ me home, missus. I was on the verge of leavin’----I done done my time for this year,” I had no idea what he was talking about and that is when another kid explained who he was to me. He said that Burris and the rest of his brothers and sisters come the first day of each year and then never come back till next. He doesn’t have a mother and his dad isn’t there for them. I realized that I have made a huge mistake and when Burris left was crying my heart out. The children were comforting me and told me to read another story. We finished the day with a story about frogs and all of the kids went home until tomorrow. I don’t know what to expect tomorrow but I hope and I’m pretty sure that it will turn out better then today did.

Apparently everybody knows who each and everyone is, in Maycomb. So that puts a lot of pressure on me because I just moved here and I don’t know much about anybody at all. I came here to introduce a new teaching technique with other teachers. I know that I will have to change myself to fit in and I can tell that most families in this town are very different then where I lived. Although, I do feel that I can make a difference in this community.