Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Where are quotes that provide a notion of rural poverty in "To Kill a Mockingbird"?I need 3 for a log. Thanks.

In Chapter 2 of "To Kill a Mockingbird," as Scout attends her first day back in school,  "Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere" at lunch time.  The new teacher, Miss Caroline walks along the desks and stops at the desk of Walter Cunningham:



Walter Cunningham's face told everybody in the first grade he had hookworms.  His absence of shoes told us how he got them.  People caught hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows.  If Walter had owned any shoes he would have worn them the first day of school and then discarded them until mid-winter.



Later Atticus said,



professional people were poor because the farmer were poor.  As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers.  Entailment was only a part of Mr.Cunningham's vexations.  the acres not entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he made went to interest....As the Cunninghams had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us with what they had....Dr. Reynolds works the same way....He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby.



Of course, the Ewells are also very poor.  In Chapter 17 Scout describes how they live:



behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin.  The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flats, so only its general shpae suggested its original design...The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry..made the plot around the cabin look like the playhouse of an insane child....[with]  scrawny ornage chickens pecking hopefully.



And, poor Tom Robinson has company in his poverty with many of the other black members of the town.  When Scout and Jem attend church with Calpurnia, Scout asks Calpurnia why they do not have prayer books.  During the service, a collection is taken up for Mrs. Robinson who cannot find work.  In addition, in the chapters about the trial of Tom, there are indications of the poverty of some of the residents as they appear in the courtroom.

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