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Examples Of Rumors In To Kill A Mockingbird

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If you ever went to middle school then you know that rumors and gossip are part of the daily routine of most of the students. Most of the time these rumors aren’t nice, and the gossip is mostly negative and heavily opinionated, yet many take part. Almost everyone, at one point, has started a rumor about someone else, had a rumor made up about themselves, or obligingly gave into the spread of rumors. The thing about rumors is that no one really has any factual evidence for them, yet people believe them regardless. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, she explores the concept of rumors through the character Boo Radley. Boo is a peculiar man whose father, because of his wrongdoing as a teenager, has kept him contained to the family’s …show more content…

Scout is telling us something about the day Jem rolled her down a hill in a tire and she crashed in the Radley’s front yard. She tells us, “Through all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea, and Jem yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing.”(45) The mystery person inside the house is most likely Boo Radley, because during this time of day Nathan Radley would have been at work. This scene shows Boo Radley’s humanity because even though people think of him as a scary phantom, he still has a humorous side. Later on Jem is telling Scout something about the night that they almost got shot by Mr. Nathan while trying to get a look at Boo. He says, “When I went back for my breeches- they were all in a tangle when I was getting’ out of ‘em… when I went back they were folded across the fence… And something else-... They’d been sewed.”(pg 66) In this scene you have to infer that this was Boo’s doing. Mr. Nathan had shot at the intruder so he wouldn’t then sew up their pants and fold them neatly across the fence. Since this was most likely Boo’s we can see that Boo wants to make sure the kids don’t get in trouble, because if Jem never got his pants back Atticus would have known it was his children who were prowling on the Radley’s yard. Also we can see that Boo …show more content…

One night Scout is awakened by her father and told to put on her robe and coat and get out of the house. When Jem and Scout get outside they see that their neighbor Miss Maudie’s house is on fire. After the fire is put out, Scout and Jem go inside and Scout has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders The kids are then having a conversation with Atticus and Jem starts to spill all the mischief the kids have gotten into this summer involving Boo. Atticus says, “We’d better keep this and the blanket to ourselves. Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her up.” And Scout asks, “Thank who?” Atticus responds, “Boo Radley. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn’t know when he put the blanket around you.”(81-82) Boo is nice and is making sure that Scout stays warm in the cold air. This is when Scout starts to realize that Boo Radley may not be as scary as she thought. Later Scout and Jem are walking home from the Halloween pageant and they get attacked by someone who we soon finds out is Bob Ewell. Mr. Ewell breaks Jem’s arm and pushes Scout down. Since Scout is in a big ham costume she can’t really tell what’s going on. Once she regains her senses she sees a man walking towards her house. She describes that, “The man was walking with the staccato steps of someone carrying a load to heavy for him. He was going around the corner. He was carrying Jem.” (302) We find

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