Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

Close Reading Organizer - Chapter 1 Sample

Answers
Directions: Read each summary entry and think about which themes listed in the
Themes Key apply to it, then color in those themes in the Theme Tracker. Next, write a
few sentences of Analysis to explain how the themes you chose apply to each summary
section.

Note: There is not always a definitive set of “correct” answers for which themes should appear in the
Theme Tracker. Answers that differ from the ones we propose below should therefore not automatically
be treated as incorrect, and in fact can serve as great discussion starters.

Themes Key
1 Good, Evil, and Human Dignity
2 Prejudice
3 Growing Up
4 Courage
5 Small Town Southern Life

Summary Theme Tracker Your Analysis

Scout explains that when 1 2 3 4 5 In particular, the fact that

her brother, Jem, was 13, Atticus (and by extension,
he broke his arm. Many Jem and Scout) are related
years later, they argue to most people in the
about when everything county speaks to the nature
that led to the accident of Maycomb: it’s a close-
truly began. Jem maintains knit and insular community.
that it began the year Dill However, the note that
arrived, while Scout insists Maycomb is poor speaks to
that if they want to take a the era in which the story
broad view, it began with takes place—the Great
Andrew Jackson. She gives Depression—and suggests
a brief account of her that in some ways,
family’s history—Simon Maycomb isn’t much
Finch established a different from most other
modest plantation called towns that were also tired,
Finch’s Landing and the poor, and struggling with
Finches remained on the the economic downturn.
land until Scout’s father,
Atticus, and his brother
left to study law and

1
Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

medicine, respectively.
Atticus set up shop in
Maycomb, 20 miles away
from Finch’s Landing, and
is related to nearly
everyone in the county.
When the story begins,
Maycomb is a tired and
poor old town, and Scout’s
family lives on the main
residential street.

Scout and Jem love Scout likely finds Calpurnia

Atticus, but their cook,
Calpurnia, is a mystery.
Since Scout’s mother died
when Scout was two,
Calpurnia raises Scout and
Jem and Scout finds her
tyrannical. When Scout is
six and Jem is 10, they
spend their summer
playing on their block and,
one morning, they find a
boy sitting in Miss
Rachel’s collard patch. He
introduces himself as
Charles Baker Harris, or
Dill, and announces that
he’s almost seven and can
read. Dill is from
Mississippi and is spending
the summer with his aunt,
Miss Rachel. He explains
that he saw the film
Dracula, which endears
him to Scout and Jem.
After this, they spend the
summer in their tree house
and performing their
various dramas based off
of their favorite books. By
August they’re bored, so
Dill turns his attention to
the Radley Place.
tyrannical and one-
dimensional because she’s
so young and can’t yet
understand Calpurnia as a
complex individual. Dill and
his imagination begin to
situate these kinds of
fantasy games as a
hallmark of childhood in
Mockingbird, while the fact
that their games are based
off of books indicates that
all three children are
literate. While this might
not seem important to the
1 2 3 4 5 children themselves, it does
point to their financial
situation and Atticus’s
professional job, as they
have enough money to live
in a home that encourages
education.

The Radley Place is a low 1 2 3 4 5 The beliefs that a phantom

2
Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

house in disrepair two lives in the house and that

doors down. A phantom everything is poisoned is
lives inside and commits clearly the work of young
petty crimes, and children imaginations. But note
believe everything on the where those rumors likely
property is poisoned. The stem from: the Radley
Radleys keep to family is considered strange
themselves, something and even evil because they
unheard of in Maycomb. don’t socialize like most
According to legend, the people in Maycomb. The
youngest son, Arthur particulars of Boo being
“Boo” Radley, joined a kept at home, coupled with
gang in his teens, Calpurnia’s posthumous
participated in tormenting assessment of Mr. Radley’s
a parish official, and rather character, suggests that the
than allow his son to reason for their seclusion
attend the industrial may have been abuse, but
school, Mr. Radley kept this seems to be beyond
Boo at home from then on. the children’s
Then—according to the understanding.
neighborhood scold, Miss
Stephanie Crawford—
when Jem was little, Boo
stabbed his father with
scissors. Jem figures that
these days, Boo lives
chained to his bed. Mr.
Radley died soon after and
Calpurnia whispered that
he was mean, which
surprised Jem and Scout—
she never speaks ill of
white people. Nathan
Radley returned to the
house to imprison his
brother. All of this
fascinates Dill.

Jem entertains Dill by 1 2 3 4 5 Jem’s very real anxiety

describing what Boo looks about touching Radley
like: tall and scarred with Place makes the case that
yellow teeth and fed on a as people ostracize others
diet of raw cats and for being different and as
squirrels. Dill decides he’d rumors circulate, this
like to get a look, so he inevitably turns into not an
dares Jem to touch the understanding of difference,
house by goading and but a genuine fear of

3
Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

insulting him. Jem takes people who are different.

his time but races to the That this shows up in a
house, slaps the siding, child rather than an adult,
and then races back to the however, does offer hope
safety of his own porch that Jem will be able to
with Dill and Scout behind question this later.
him. The children notice a
small movement in the
window.