To kill a mockingbird

1
To kill a mockingbird

• Secondary Characters

2
Charles Baker Dill Harris

• Charles Baker Dill Harris is Jem and Scouts
  best friend who visits Maycomb every summer and
  stays with his aunt Miss Rachel.
• His goal throughout the novel is to get Boo
  Radley to come out of his house, and for the
  first few summers the children concoct many plans
  to lure him out, until Atticus stops them.
• Dill promises to marry Scout and they become
  engaged. One night Dill runs away from his home
  in the city, because he feels like he is being
  replaced in the family by his step-father. He
  gets on a train and goes to Maycomb County, then
  hides under Scouts bed until she finds him.

3
Dill

• Unlike Jem and Scout, Dill lacks the security of
  family love. He is unwanted and unloved by his
  parents. Dill is described as not having a
  father he doesnt know where he lives or when
  hell come back, if he does.
• As Dill is only a Maycomb inhabitant during the
  summer, he can be used to provide information to
  the reader at key moments in the novel when Scout
  or Jem fill him in.

4
Dill

• Dills family background is very different from
  that of Scout and Jem. His father seems to have
  little contact with him and his family show
  little concern for his well-being.
• At the trial, Harper Lee contrasts Dills
  sensitive nature with logical and rational Jem.
  Whereas Jem wants to confront prejudice, Dill
  decides to accept things the way they are and
  make the best of them.
• Dill has a curious and quick-thinking nature. He
  dwells in his own twilight world and gives the
  impression that his wild imagination is
  stimulated by unhappiness in his life.

5
Dill

• Dill is a little boy with a big imagination. He
  plays with Scout and Jem and comes up with all
  kinds of eccentric plans.
• He can be very honest. He tells the Finch family
  that his Aunt Rachel drinks a pint for breakfast
  every morning. When Aunt Alexandra challenges
  this, he says hes just tellin the truth.

6
Dill

• He has an active imagination and often prefers
  to make things up rather than tell the truth. The
  reader gets the impression that he uses his
  imagination to get away from his unhappy home
  life.
• He runs away from things that make him unhappy.
  Dill doesnt feel loved by his parents. He runs
  away from home because his family just wasnt
  interested in me.
• Hes so upset at the way Tom Robinson is treated
  in the courtroom that he has to leave hes
  running away from reality again.
• Dill says that hes going to be a clown when hes
  older because theres nothing you can do about
  people but laugh at them. Its another example of
  his escapism he doesnt think things will
  change so he imagines running away to the circus
  to escape Maycombs prejudice.

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Calpurnia

• Calpurnia is the Finchs housekeeper, whom the
  children love and Atticus deeply respects.
• She is an important figure in Scouts life and
  provides discipline, instruction and love. She
  also fills the maternal role for them after their
  mothers death.
• Calpurnia is one of the few black characters in
  the novel who is able to read and write, and it
  is she who taught Scout to write.

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Calpurnia

• She learned to read from Miss Maudies aunt Miss
  Buford, who taught her to read out of
  Blackstones Commentaries, a book given to her
  by Atticus father.
• Living in Maycombs African American and
  Caucasian communities, Calpurnia has two
  different perspectives on life, and Scout notices
  that she speaks differently with her black
  friends than at their home. Whilst everyone is
  filtered through Scout's perception, Calpurnia in
  particular appears for a long time as Scouts
  idea of her than as a real person.
• At the beginning of the novel, Scout thinks of
  her as wicked stepmother to her being Cinderella.
  However, towards the end of the novel, Scout
  views Calpurnia as someone she can look up to and
  realises that Calpurnia has only protected her
  over the years.

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Calpurnia Key Points

1. Calpurnia represents the bridge between the white
   and the black communities
2. Calpurnia gives Atticus and the children
   information about the Robinson family
3. Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to the black
   community church, thus providing the children
   with valuable information that will inform them
   during the trial.
4. Atticus uses Calpurnia to thank the black
   community for their gifts to him after the trial,
   but reminds her to tell them they mustnt do this
   again as life is hard.
5. Calpurnia is the person that Atticus chooses to
   accompany him to tell Helen Robinson of her
   husbands death.

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Calpurnia

• Calpurnia teaches and disciplines the Finch
  children. Jem and Scouts mother died when they
  were young so Calpurnia helps Atticus raise his
  children.
• She educates Scout she teaches her to write by
  setting her writing tasks on rainy days. She also
  teaches the children manners she is furious
  with Scout when she criticises Walter
  Cunninghams table manners.
• She isnt afraid to tell the children off when
  she finds them in the courthouse she tells them
  they should be shamed of themselves for being
  at the trial. Atticus trusts her completely. When
  Scout complains that Cal is too strict, Atticus
  responds you mind her, you hear?

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Calpurnia

• She really cares about the Finch family. She can
  be affectionate towards Scout. For example, she
  kisses her and makes her crackling bread after
  her first day at school and calls her baby and
  honey.
• Shes compassionate she tells Scout to come and
  find her in the kitchen if she ever fells
  lonesome, and Scout turns to Calpurnia as Jem
  grows more distant.
• Calpurnia can read and write this is powerful
  as it gives the reader hope that characters like
  her can use their education to change white
  peoples attitudes and liberate the black
  community.

12
Arthur Boo Radley

• Arthur Boo Radley is the most mysterious
  character in To Kill a Mockingbird, and slowly
  reveals himself throughout the novel.
• Boo Radley is a very quiet, reclusive character,
  who only passively presents himself until the
  childrens final interaction with Bob Ewell.
  Maycomb children believe that he is a horrible
  person, due to the rumours spread about him, and
  a trial he underwent as a teenager.
• It is implied during the novel that Boo is a very
  lonely man who attempts to reach out to the
  children for love and friendship, for instance by
  leaving them small gifts and figures in a tree
  stump.

13
Boo

• However, none of the children realise it was he
  until the end of the book, when he saves Jem and
  Scouts lives.
• It is at this point that Scout finally meets him,
  the first time in the book. Scout describes him
  as being sickly white, with a thin mouth and grey
  eyes, almost as if he was blind.
• During the same night, when Boo requests that
  Scout walk him back to the Radley House, Scout
  takes a moment to picture what it would be like
  to be Boo Radley, and while standing on his
  porch, she realises that his exile inside his
  house is really not that lonely.