Walking Home from the Pageant

TL;DR: On the dark road home from the pageant, footsteps follow the children. A body crashes into them under the live oaks. The chicken-wire ham costume crumples around Scout and saves her ribs. She hears a wheezing fight in the dark, then sees a tall pale stranger carrying Jem's limp body toward the streetlamp. Atticus calls Dr. Reynolds. Heck Tate arrives. Bob Ewell is found dead under the oaks with a kitchen knife under his ribs.

Spoilers through Chapter 28.

Chapter in one sentence

Beneath a knot of black oaks a child in a ham costume hears scuffling, breaking branches, and the wheeze of a man, and then sees a stranger carrying her brother home in his arms.

What happens

After the pageant the children head home along the deserted school road. Scout has chosen to keep the costume on; she carries her shoes. The night is moonless and chilly; the cicadas have quit. Halfway across the open field by the schoolhouse, they hear footsteps behind them and dismiss it as a friend. The footsteps speed up. Jem shoves Scout to run. Then a body crashes into them under the live oaks.

Scout, immobilized inside the wire frame, can see almost nothing. She hears Jem grunt; a man wheeze; a second sound — a heavier man arriving; the original attacker thrown to the ground; the wheezing rising in someone's chest. The chicken-wire ham crumples around her ribs and saves her. She is rolled out of it. She sees Jem on the ground, his left arm bent under him at an impossible angle. A tall, unfamiliar man — pale, slight, with long colorless hair — picks Jem up and carries him toward the streetlight at the Finch corner. Scout follows, bewildered. At home, Atticus calls Dr. Reynolds; Heck Tate is summoned; Bob Ewell is found dead under the oaks where the attack happened, a kitchen knife under his ribs.

Key moments

• The walk along the dark school road; the moonless night; the cicadas silent
• The dismissed second set of footsteps in the field
• The collision under the oaks — chicken wire crushed around a child
• The unseen second man's arrival and Bob Ewell's wheezing
• The stranger carrying Jem under the corner streetlight
• Atticus, Dr. Reynolds, and Heck Tate at the Finch house
• The discovery of Bob's body in the dirt under the oaks, kitchen knife under his ribs

Character shifts

The book's structural frame closes. Jem's broken arm — promised in Chapter 1 — happens here. Scout is, for the duration of the attack, immobilized inside a comic prop and reduced to listening. The chapter is engineered so that the reader experiences the attack through Scout's audio rather than her eyes — wheezing, grunts, the snap of the wire frame, a man falling — and only afterward can identify what happened. The technical achievement of the chapter is one of the most carefully composed action sequences in American fiction; the writing is tighter and faster than anywhere else in the book.

Why it matters

The chicken-wire ham costume, the chapter discloses retroactively, has saved Scout's life. Lee has been setting this up for two chapters. The stranger carrying Jem under the streetlight at the Finch corner is the long-delayed first appearance of Boo Radley out of his house and on the same patch of street the children have been walking past their whole lives. The mystery of who saved them is held for one more chapter — Scout does not recognize him until Chapter 29 — but the reader already does.

Themes to notice

• The ham costume as the book's most efficient piece of plot machinery — comedy converted into structural protection
• Bob Ewell as the predator he has always been — confronting two children on a dark road because he could not face an adult
• The Finch frame closing — the broken arm in Chapter 1 has become the broken arm in Chapter 28
• The unnamed stranger as the book's longest-deferred reveal — fifteen chapters of off-stage gifts becoming one decisive intervention

Book club questions

• The attack is filtered through Scout's audio because the chicken-wire frame blocks her sight. What does the book gain by giving us the attack through what she hears rather than what she sees?
• Bob Ewell threatens Atticus directly for twenty chapters and then attacks his children on a dark road. What is the book's argument about what kind of man does that?
• Boo Radley emerges from his house for the first time in fifteen years to do what he does in this chapter. Lee delays his identification by one chapter. Why?
• The chicken-wire ham costume is comic in Chapter 27 and is the thing that saves Scout's life in Chapter 28. What does it mean to you, on rereading, that the costume was both?

Visual memory hook

A crushed chicken-wire ham in the dirt under live oaks. A pale, slim, unfamiliar man carrying a limp boy into the cone of light from a single streetlamp. A kitchen knife in the dirt. Cicadas silent.

What's next

A pale stranger stands in the dim corner of the Finch living room. Scout, after a long moment, looks at him and says: "Hey, Boo."