Dill (Charles Baker Harris)

TL;DR: The summer-visiting boy from Meridian, Mississippi, who appears in Miss Rachel's collard patch in Chapter 1 and is half-promised to Scout for life by Chapter 4. Small for his age, snow-white hair, born storyteller. Cries openly during Tom Robinson's cross-examination — the moment the children's summers stop being summers.

Spoiler level: spoiler-light. Discusses his three summers in Maycomb and his courtroom moment. Does not name the Halloween events of Part Two (Dill is not present).

Snapshot

Charles Baker Harris is a small platinum-haired boy who summers next door at his aunt Miss Rachel's house. He is "almost a head shorter" than Scout, the third member of the children's pack, and the book's most reliable source of summer mischief — until Chapter 19, when the trial breaks him quietly on a courthouse bench and he has to be walked outside.

Role in the story

Dill is the children's third — the engine of every Boo Radley scheme in Part One and the visiting outsider whose summer arrivals mark the rhythm of the book. He is the one who dares Jem to touch the Radley wall (Ch. 1), proposes the fishing-pole note (Ch. 5), runs away from home and hides under Scout's bed (Ch. 14), and weeps openly at Mr. Gilmer's cross-examination of Tom Robinson (Ch. 19). He is absent for the climactic chapters — he is back in Mississippi by Halloween — but his presence in the first two-thirds of the book is one of the things that makes Maycomb feel like Maycomb.

Personality in plain English

A small magpie of stories. He lies cheerfully and inventively about his absent father, who he claims at various points to be a railroad conductor, a chess master, and the operator of a freighter. He proposes wild plans. He is the children's natural director — he plays Boo Radley with a butcher-paper costume in Chapter 4, blocks scenes, casts roles. Beneath the act is a lonely child whose parents have remarried and barely register that he exists, and the brief conversation he has with Scout under her bed in Chapter 14 about that fact is one of the book's tenderest moments.

What he wants

To stay in Maycomb. (He runs away from his new stepfather in Chapter 14 specifically so he can get there.) To marry Scout someday, maybe — it is half a joke and half not. To matter to the people he is around, in a way his parents do not seem to require him to matter to them.

What he fears

That his parents do not actually want him there. That summer always ends and he has to go back. Implicitly, after Chapter 19: that the world is meaner than his stories had made it.

Key relationships

• Scout — half-fiancée, half-confidante. The bedroom-floor whisper conversations they have at night are some of the book's most quietly intimate scenes.
• Jem — older boy, secondary leader of the trio. In Part Two Jem ages out of the games and Dill ages into Scout's confidant more than Jem's lieutenant.
• Miss Rachel Haverford — his aunt, the curlers-and-cordials neighbor he summers with.
• Mr. Dolphus Raymond — the white-linen-suited landowner who, on the courthouse lawn in Chapter 19, lets Dill drink from his paper-bagged bottle of Coca-Cola and explains why he pretends to be a drunk. That conversation is the book's first explicit lesson about adult performance for the benefit of a town that needs an excuse.
• Tom Robinson — whom Dill never speaks to but whose cross-examination breaks him.

Visual identity

Very small for his age — explicitly "almost a head shorter" than Scout. A small heart-shaped face, narrowing to a pointed chin. Snow-white-blond hair, fine and baby-soft, falling forward over the eyes (the book's most specific physical detail for Dill, repeated). Pale platinum brows that nearly disappear. A small upturned button nose, freckles across the bridge. Large round bright blue eyes with pale lashes. A small chip out of the right corner of his upper front tooth. Summer uniform: blue cotton shorts buttoned to a short-sleeved white shirt, no shoes, sometimes a small straw flat-brim hat held in one hand. Smelled, Scout says once, like a fresh haircut and sweet talcum.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Dill (canonical — the most common form)
• Charles Baker Harris

Discussion questions

• Dill lies almost reflexively in the early chapters. What is the book asking us to make of those lies — are they harmless summer-fiction, or are they a small boy trying to make himself necessary?
• Why does Dill cry openly during Tom Robinson's cross-examination when Scout and Jem do not? What does he see that the Finch children, who live with Atticus, have already had time to absorb?
• Mr. Dolphus Raymond pulls Dill aside on the courthouse lawn for the book's most generous adult-to-child confidence. Why Dill specifically? Why not Scout?
• Dill is absent for the climactic Halloween chapters. What does the book lose — or gain — by not having him there?
• The book's frame is set up by Scout's adult voice; Dill is one of the few characters whose adult life we never see. Why does Lee leave him a child?