An Eventful

Summer
by Harper Lee​
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but
remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Harper Lee

The youngest daughter of Amasa Coleman Lee and

Frances Cunningham Finch Lee.
Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama on
April 28, 1926
As a child, Harper Lee was an unruly tomboy. She fought
on the playground. She talked back to teachers. She was
bored with school and resisted any sort of conformity
The character of Scout is somewhat autobiographical,
readers gain their best access to Lee's childhood — or at
least the flavor of her childhood
Lee spent the next two-and-a-half years working on the
manuscript. Her efforts paid off, and To Kill a
Mockingbird, her first and only novel, was published in
1960.
Go Set a Watchman
 To Kill a Mockingbird

In To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee uses memorable

characters to explore civil rights and racism in the
segregated Southern United States of the 1930s. Told
through the eyes of Scout ( Jean Louis Finch), you learn
about her father Atticus Finch, an and her brother Jeremy.
The novel means different things to different people, but
generally it is seen as a "growing up" story with a strong
message against racism, intolerance, and cruelty.
In 1961, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize.
Lee was unprepared for the amount of personal attention
associated with writing a bestseller. Ever since, she has led
a quiet and guardedly private life.
An Eventful Summer - A dull summer in
Maycomb becomes eventful
This Chapter recounts events that take place in the town Maycomb, in
the year 1930.
This chapter merely gives the reader a view of the Maycomb society
and its inhabitants.
Since the entire novel is a narrative seen through Scout’s eyes, the
visualization is purely from a child’s point of view.
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town
when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to
red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse
sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black
dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to
Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live
oaks on the square.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square,
shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time
about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but
seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere
to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing
to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it
was a time of vague optimism for some of the people:
Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing
to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town— Atticus,
Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our
father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and
treated us with courteous detachment.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all
angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she
squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice
as hard. She was always ordering me out of the
kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as well as
Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me
home when I wasn’t ready to come. Our battles
were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won,
mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had
been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt
her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her
when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was
the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a
sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly,
and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house.
When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him.

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summer time boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were
Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We
were never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of
whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.

That was the summer Dill came to us.

Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the
back yard, Jem and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel
Haverford’s collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if
there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was expecting—
instead, we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down,
he wasn’t much higher than the collards. We stared at him
until he spoke:
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly.
“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said. “I can read.”
“So what?” I said.
“I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything
needs readin‘ I can do it…”
“How old are you,” asked Jem,
“four-and-a-half?”
“Goin‘ on seven.”
 It's written that way to imitate
Dropped 'G' and punctuation the way that many English
speakers change the -ng ending
to an -n in conversation,
…there’s only two places where apostrophes should appear in
> contraction or omission
it’s (it is), you’re (you are), who’s (?whose), they’re (?their ?there)
’60s (1960s), rockin’ (rocking), fish’n’chips (fish and chips)
> possession
tom’s book (the book of tom)
cheesecake’s texture (the texture of the cheesecake)
ross’ (only an apostrophe is needed when the word ends with s)
children’s (add an apostrophe and s for plural possessive not ending in s)
…be very careful of plurals - no apostrophes unless for possession
1960s (that is 1960, 1951, 1952, 1963, … 1969)
three dozen children (but three dozen children’s bonnets)
tony’s technique in his pastas’ sauce (but the better form is to reference one pasta, thus, tony’s
technique in his pasta sauce)
“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. “Scout yonder’s been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she
ain’t even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin’ on seven.”

“I’m little but I’m old,” he said.

Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. “Why don’t you come over, Charles Baker Harris?” he said. “Lord, what a
name.”

“‘s not any funnier’n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name’s Jeremy Atticus Finch.”

Jem scowled. “I’m big enough to fit mine,” he said. “Your name’s longer’n you are. Bet it’s a foot longer.”
“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.

“Do better if you go over it instead of under it,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”

Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every
summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in
Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to
the picture show twenty times on it.

“Don’t have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes,” said Jem. “Ever see anything good?”
Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. “Tell it to us,” he
said.

Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snow white and stuck to his
head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes
would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his
forehead.

When Dill reduced Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better than the book, I asked Dill where his
father was: “You ain’t said anything about him.”

“I haven’t got one.”

“Is he dead?”

“No…”

“Then if he’s not dead you’ve got one, haven’t you?”

Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign
that Dill had been studied and found acceptable.
Thereafter the summer passed in routine
contentment. Routine contentment was:
improving our treehouse that rested between
giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard,
fussing, running through our list of dramas based
on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and
Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In this matter we were lucky to have Dill. He

played the character parts formerly thrust upon
me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover
Boys, Mr. Damon in Tom Swift. Thus we came to
know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed
with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint
fancies.
What are Clauses
A clause is a part of a sentence, or
a group of words, which has
a subject and a verb. In some cases a
clause can form a complete sentence.
A clause is different from a phrase,
because a phrase does not have a
subject and a verb. The following are
some examples:
• I was standing near a wall.
• She made tea for the guest.
• They are singing in a loud voice
Main or Independent Clause:
This is a clause that makes sense as a
separate sentence. It does not depend
on another clause. The following are
some examples:
•I love chocolate.
•John ran quickly.
•She hates snow.
•He eats pasta everyday.
A subordinate clause can function
either as a noun, an adjective, or
an adverb.
Subordinate or Dependent
Clause:
A subordinate clause does not
make sense on its own. It depends
on the main clause to form a
sentence. In other words, it does not
express complete thought.
A subordinate clause begins with a
connective like "while," "until,"
"because," "although", or a relative
pronoun. The following are some
examples:
•While Bob was sleeping.
•Until he would finished.
•Because he was late.
•While he was cleaning.
•Because I like juice.
As a Noun clause
•Whatever you are making will be tasty.
•Does she know where you are living?
•Wherever we are going will be fine.

As a Adjective clause
•The food that I like is the pizza.
•This is the cake that Lily made.
•The person whom you met is my uncle.

As a Adverb clause
•Before I go to school, I check my homework.
•When we went to the museum, we saw a aeroplane.
•We will wait until Molly finishes her breakfast.
Test Yourself
Identify the clauses and point it whether it is a Noun Clause, Adjective Clause, Adverb
Clause.
a. The bankers need to know what they should do.
b. The books, which are lost, are not really necessary.
c. Whether you like it or not, you have to go to bed now.
d. Students who are intelligent get good grades.
e. No one knows he is.
f. When I was younger, I thought so.
g. He laughs best who laughs last.
h. I went to see what had happened.
i. He met a girl whose eyes were blue.
j. I shall remain where I am.
Determine whether the underlined word groups are dependent clauses,
independent clauses, or not a clause.

1. Although it was raining, Maria went for a jog at Civitan Park

2. Brianna eats chocolate whenever she gets a poor grade in math.
3. After the flood, the family moved into a temporary shelter.
4. While walking at the park, John saw a raccoon eating potato chips.
5. Students enrolled in bachelor's and associate's degree programs must pass the
Regents' Test as a graduation requirement.
6. Students who fail to show up for the Regents' test must enroll in the Regents'
remediation courses.
7. When you finish your homework, please take the dog for a walk.
8. After Juan completed the assignment, he swam laps at the gym.
9. Christa left home at 4:00 a.m. since she had to drive to Atlanta for a meeting.
10. Before completing the assignment, Evan decided to eat a quick lunch.
a) Ans. what they should do-Noun Clause
b) Ans. which are lost-Adjective Clause
c) Ans. Whether you like it or not-Adverb Clause
d) Ans. who are intelligent-Adjective Clause
e) Ans. who he is-Noun Clause
f)Ans. when I was younger-Adverb Clause
g) Ans. who laughs last-Adjective Clause
h) Ans. what had happened-Noun Clause
i) Ans. whose eyes were blue-Adjective Clause
j) Ans. where I am-Adverb Clause
1. Although it was raining, Maria went for a jog at Civitan Park. Dependent Clause
2. Brianna eats chocolate whenever she gets a poor grade in math. Dependent Clause
3. After the flood, the family moved into a temporary shelter. Not a Clause (This is simply
a prepositional phrase.)
4. While walking at the park, John saw a raccoon eating potato chips. Independent
Clause
5. Students enrolled in bachelor's and associate's degree programs must pass the Regents'
Test as a graduation requirement. Independent
6. Students who fail to show up for the Regents' test must enroll in the Regents' remediation
courses. Dependent Clause
7. When you finish your homework, please take the dog for a walk. Dependent Clause
8. After Juan completed the assignment, he swam laps at the gym. Dependent Clause
9. Christa left home at 4:00 a.m. since she had to drive to Atlanta for a
meeting. Dependent Clause
10. Before completing the assignment, Evan decided to eat a quick lunch. Not a Clause