Halloween Approaches

TL;DR: Bob Ewell starts making himself a problem in three small ways — gets fired from a WPA job for laziness, tries to break into Judge Taylor's house, stalks Helen Robinson on her walk to and from work. Atticus refuses to take it seriously. Aunt Alexandra is afraid. Halloween arrives. Scout's pageant costume is a chicken-wire-and-painted-cloth ham.

Spoilers through Chapter 27.

Chapter in one sentence

A girl wrapped in a chicken-wire-and-ham costume waddles down a dark country road behind her brother while the sound of a single Halloween pageant fades into autumn night.

What happens

October. Bob Ewell makes himself an irritant in three small ways: he gets and then loses a WPA job — "the only man fired from the WPA for laziness"; he tries to break into Judge Taylor's house one Sunday night while the judge reads on the porch; and he begins following Helen Robinson on her walk to and from work for Mr. Link Deas, until Mr. Deas threatens to have him arrested for assault.

Atticus refuses to take the pattern personally; Aunt Alexandra is afraid. To everyone's relief Halloween arrives as a needed distraction. Mrs. Grace Merriweather has written a county Halloween pageant for the courthouse auditorium, and Scout is cast as a ham — fitted into a chicken-wire frame swaddled in brown-painted muslin cloth, with two small eyeholes. Aunt Alexandra is too tired to attend; Atticus is exhausted from work. Jem walks Scout to the school for the pageant. The walk back will be the climax of the book.

Key moments

• Bob Ewell at the relief office, then by Judge Taylor's screen door
• Mr. Link Deas chasing Bob Ewell off Helen Robinson's path
• Scout's ham-costume fitting at the school — chicken wire, painted cloth, eyeholes
• The auditorium pageant — pumpkins, costumed children, country mothers
• Jem and Scout leaving the school in dim moonlight, Scout still in costume

Character shifts

Bob Ewell, in this chapter, is fully unraveled. Atticus's prediction in Chapter 23 — that Bob will be the one to ruin himself — is happening in slow motion, three small acts at a time. Aunt Alexandra, on the other hand, has been right all along that Bob is dangerous. The book is being patient: it lets the reader see the pattern Atticus refuses to see, and then lets the consequence catch up in the next chapter.

Why it matters

Chapter 27 is the book's last quiet chapter. Lee uses it to build the dread carefully: three small Bob Ewell incidents, casually reported; Atticus's continued refusal to take them seriously; a chicken-wire-and-painted-cloth costume that the reader does not yet know is about to be the costume that saves Scout's life. The structural setup is so deliberate that, on rereading, the chapter reads as one long quiet pre-roll for what is coming.

Themes to notice

• Bob Ewell as a small man insisting on being a problem for the people he most wants to feel powerful around — Judge Taylor, Helen Robinson, the Finches
• Atticus's calm as the chapter's quiet liability — Alexandra is right and he is wrong, and the book is making us notice
• The Halloween pageant as the book's last moment of small-town summer-evening normality before everything turns
• The ham costume as a comic prop that will, in the next chapter, do load-bearing structural work

Book club questions

• Bob Ewell ruins his own life in three quick incidents. Atticus refuses to take any of them seriously. Aunt Alexandra is afraid. We are one chapter from the attack. What is the book showing us about who reads danger and who refuses to?
• Mr. Link Deas chases Bob away from Helen Robinson's path. Atticus is told. He does not change his estimate of Bob. Why does the book give us the warning sign and then have Atticus refuse to update?
• Atticus is exhausted; Aunt Alexandra is exhausted; the children are walking home in the dark from a Halloween pageant. The book is being careful with its plot machinery. Where does the suspense come from — the events themselves, or the way Lee has staged who is and isn't present?
• The ham costume is comic in this chapter and structurally important in the next. What is the book doing by setting up a serious plot beat with a silly object?

Visual memory hook

A chicken-wire-mesh ham costume painted brown with two black eyeholes. Jack-o'-lanterns lining a country auditorium. A string of paper lanterns overhead. Hay bales as risers. A tall barefoot-in-shoes boy escorting a small ham-shaped child down a moon-shadowed road.

What's next

The road home from the pageant. Footsteps behind them. A scuffle under the live oaks. A stranger carrying a limp boy toward a streetlamp.