Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______

Close Reading Organizer - Chapter 25 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

One September evening, 1 2 3 4 5 The assertion that Tom

Jem makes Scout put a showed his true colors
pill bug outside rather than when he tried to escape
squish it. He insists that speaks again to the racist
the bug isn’t bothering stereotypes that propose
Scout, so there’s no reason that all black people are
to kill it. Scout lies back on dishonest and
her cot, thinking of Dill, untrustworthy. It’s far more
and remembers suddenly likely that Tom didn’t see
what Dill told her. He and any other avenue to escape
Jem had been swimming from his horrible, unfair
and, as is customary, circumstances and was
waved to a car for a ride broken mentally, something
home. It turned out to be entirely understandable in
Atticus and Calpurnia, his situation. That Maycomb
and Atticus grudgingly is so disinterested in Tom’s
allowed them to come to death shows again how
the Robinson cabin and little the town thinks of its
told them what happened. black residents.
A child fetched Helen as
Atticus played with a

1
Name: __________________________________ Date: ___________________ Period: ______
toddler. Helen collapsed
before Atticus said
anything. Scout says that
Maycomb was only
interested in Tom’s death
for two days, and many
believed that he showed
his true colors when he
tried to escape.
Following Tom’s death, Mr.
Underwood wrote a bitter
article about how it’s a sin
to kill disabled people. He
likened it to senselessly
killing songbirds. Scout
was confused, since Tom
received due process, but
then she realized that Tom
1 2
was always going to be
convicted. Meanwhile, Jem
and Scout hear from Miss
Stephanie that Mr. Ewell
is thrilled with Tom’s death
and has said that there are
“two more to go.” Jem
swears Scout to secrecy
about this.
Mr. Underwood’s article
likens Tom to a songbird,
which situates Tom as a
kind of mockingbird in
Atticus’s moral adage to his
children. Like an innocent
mockingbird, Tom never did
anything but help others
and go through the world
3 4 5
kindly and compassionately.
Disability or not, Atticus
would suggest that Tom
didn’t deserve to die, as he
did nothing but good. In
effectively sentencing Tom
to his death, then,
Maycomb has committed a
terrible sin.