|
A thorough reading of To Kill A Mockingbird will give an
appreciation of the author’s attention to detail in presenting the setting of her tale. Your job is to draw a detailed
map of the immediate surroundings of the main street on which the Finch family lives and the relative buildings. Be neat,
colorful, and include labels and page references from your text.
If you read To Kill
A Mockingbird carefully, you will
notice that Harper Lee has done a very nice job of creating a setting from the past. It is part factual and part mythical,
probably based upon her own experiences and tidbits of her imagination. In this project we will not try to weed out the factual
from the fantasy, but we will try to draw a detailed map of the immediate surroundings in which the story unfolds through
a careful examination of the story’s setting. To do this the reader must read with an observant eye.
Construct a map of Maycomb, the town in which the story takes place, but it will not be the entire county. We
will be looking for details about the main street where Atticus Finch lives, the adjoining town square and even the junk yard,
where the Ewell’s live. We will want to document as many of the town structures as possible.
Most of the structures and town features will be observed as they are mentioned in the text, but some can only
be identified through deductive reasoning, and these will be very important to this assignment.
Sometimes you will have to draw upon ‘deductive reasoning’ to come up with a proper location. We
can use this to decide a very important characteristic of our map. It is mentioned in the text that Miss Maudie’s house
is across the street from the Finch’s house. This is clearly stated. But is the Finch house on the North, South, East,
or West side of the street. Hmmmm. This could determine whether or not any location we place on the map as correct or incorrect.
Fortunately, Harper Lee has included a very important clue in the setting. From it we can deduce the exact placement of the
Finch and Miss Maudie’s house, two very important reference points for our map.
Keyword: Miss Maudie’s
House
Quote: “We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s
yard from our driveway. . . .[Jem] pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind Miss Maudie’s pecan trees.”
Location: Chapter 6; pages 54
- 55
From this information we can deduce that since Miss Maudie lives across the street from the Finch residence,
Miss Rachel lives next door to Atticus Finch, there is a low wall separating the houses and that Miss Maudie’s house
is on the eastern side of the street and the Finch residence is on the western side of the street.
Of course you will find other clues that indicate which side of the Finch house is the location for Miss Rachel’s
house and even the more important Radley house.
|
