Summary
Scout, Jem, and Calpurnia spot a rabid, crazed dog moving down the street in their neighborhood. Calpurnia calls Atticus and notifies him of the situation; he and Sheriff Heck Tate come over immediately with a rifle. Tate looks hesitantly at the dog, decides he can’t shoot well enough to kill it, and hands over the rifle to Atticus, to which a disbelieving Scout shouts, “No, Mr. Tate. He can’t shoot!” in response. Despite not shooting a gun in years, Atticus moves forward and takes aim, raising his glasses to see better. They begin to slip down his face, so he drops them on the street. Atticus then makes a perfect, clean shot at the dog, and Scout and Jem are both stunned to see the dead dog flop over. Tate notices the children's dumbfounded faces and says, “Didn’t you know your daddy’s the best shot in this county?” The two men then go back into town.
Later, Jem and Scout join Atticus on a visit to the house of Helen Robinson—the wife of Tom Robinson—in the countryside. By the time they arrive at the house, Scout is already asleep. While Atticus talks to Helen about his latest visit with Tom and the postponement of the trial, a young black boy approaches Atticus’s car; he and Jem wave at each other before a drunk, menacing Bob Ewell staggers in front of the car and stares into the window at the children. Jem asks the boy to fetch Atticus, who silently faces off with Ewell. Ewell snarls, “You n—er lover” at Atticus and stumbles away. Atticus then reassures a clearly shaken Jem with, “No need to be afraid of him, son. He’s all bluff.” As they drive away, Ewell is still espousing threats in the middle of the road.
When they arrive home, Atticus tells Jem, “There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.” Jem is left unsupervised on the porch while Atticus drives Calpurnia home, and he becomes terrorized after hearing screeching animals and rustling bushes and trees. He attempts to run after Atticus for comfort, before realizing the futility of trying to match the pace of a moving car; he pauses at the Radley property. Jem then notices a shiny medal in the knothole of a tree in the Radley’s front yard. He pockets the medal and runs home.
The older version of Scout then explains over voiceover: “Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fightin' any more. I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot...Cecil Jacobs made me forget” while we see the younger Scout fight with Cecil Jacobs at school. Later that day, we see Atticus walk up to Scout, who has her head buried inside her arms, at the porch. Atticus asks Scout what’s wrong, and Scout then pointedly asks her father, “Atticus, do you defend n—ers?” Atticus tells Scout not to say those hateful, ignorant words, and Scout defends herself, saying that she didn’t say them, Cecil Jacobs did—“That’s why I had to fight him.” An angered Atticus tells Scout not to fight and explains his reasoning for making the unpopular decision of defending Tom Robinson: “There are some things that you're not old enough to understand just yet. There's been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn't do much about defending this man...if I didn't [defend Tom], I couldn't hold my head up in town. I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do somethin' again. You're gonna hear some ugly talk about this in school. But I want you to promise me one thing...that you won't get into fights over it, no matter what they say to you.” A confused but accepting Scout agrees not to fight anymore.
While Jem and Scout walk like Egyptians in the neighborhood, Scout notices two objects in the same knothole from earlier. They pull out the objects, only to discover that they are two carved soap figures which both resemble Jem and Scout: the male figurine has “hair in front of his eyebrows” like Jem, and the girl “wears bangs” like Scout. They realize, “these are us!” and suddenly Mr. Radley approaches the tree and begins to fill the hole with cement. Jem and Scout run away with the soap figures in hand.
Later that night, Scout can’t go to sleep and joins Jem in his room. After some hesitation and making Scout promise that she would never “tell anybody,” Jem shows Scout a box containing marbles, an old pocket watch, the two figures, a whistle, the spelling medal, a crayon, and other items from the mysterious knothole giver. Jem also reveals an additional secret—when he received his pants from the Radley house back in Part 2, he found them nicely “folded across the fence—sort of like they was expectin’ me.” Scout and Jem exchange puzzled looks before the grown-up Scout, in voiceover, comments, “It was to be a long time before Jem and I talked about Boo again.”
The summer finally arrives, and Dill comes back to Maycomb. Jem and Atticus watch Tate drive by with Tom Robinson in his car. Atticus reveals to Jem that Tom has been staying in the Abbottsville jail, as the sheriff thought he would be safer there than in Maycomb. Atticus also notifies Jem of the trial, which is scheduled for the next day. Later, Tate visits the Finch household, and he tells Atticus, “The news has gotten around the county about my bringing Tom Robinson back to the jail [in Maycomb]” and implies that he has to abandon his watching of Tom (in the town’s jail) because of rumored trouble in Old Sarum. Atticus then decides to stand guard outside of Maycomb’s jail and asks Calpurnia to stay the night.
Scout, Jem, and Dill run toward jail to find Atticus. Hiding behind bushes, they spot him reading a book and sitting on a propped-up chair at the jail entrance. Satisfied, Jem says, "I just wanted to see where he was and what he was up to. He's all right. Let's go back home” and the three children prepare to go back home.
Then, a jumble of cars approach the town square and surround the jail. Scout, Jem, and Dill retreat back the bushes while the men emerge from their cars. Racist and ignorant, these men are a lynch mob gathered to brutally murder Tom after successfully diverting Sheriff Tate to Old Sarum. The men demand that Atticus move aside and let them inside the jail; Atticus refuses. The three children then push through the crowd and confront their angry father, who is clearly concerned for their safety. Atticus commands Jem to go home, and Jem declines. Members of the crowd then forcibly try to push Jem aside; Scout fights them back, declaring, “Ain’t nobody gonna do Jem that way!”
As the crowd and the Finches calm down, Scout recognizes Walter Cunningham Sr. in the mob. She engages in a candid and calculated conversation with him, saying, “How's your entailment getting along? Don't you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I'm Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one early morning, remember? We had a talk. I went and got my daddy to come out and thank you. I go to school with your boy. I go to school with Walter. He's a nice boy. Tell him 'hey' for me, won't you?...” Her words embarrass Mr. Cunningham Sr.—who ultimately treats Scout with respect and tells her, “I’ll tell Walter you said hey”—and the entire crowd, who dissipates thereafter. Atticus then commands the children to return home again, and they obey and begin walking back. Offscreen, we hear Tom ask Atticus if everybody left the jail. Atticus replies, “They’ve gone. They won’t bother you anymore.”
Analysis
Part 3 of To Kill a Mockingbird centers on the tension leading up to Tom Robinson’s thunderous trial, all the while unveiling the deep prejudices that haunt Maycomb. As Jem and Scout become more exposed to the coexistence of good and evil in their town, they lose their innocence and gain new perspectives on the unfairness and cruelness of the world around them.
Bob Ewell emerges as a clear antagonist in Part 3. He trespasses and menaces the Finches and Robinson's wife, calling Atticus a "n—er lover," a term cruel and offensive to both Black Americans and the White Americans who support them. The fact that he does this in front of the children makes this all the more clearly a detestable display of carelessness and hate. Up until this scene, Jem had idolized his father, who instills lessons of morality, equality, and fairness onto him and Scout. Thus, witnessing another man brutally insult his father’s morals disorients Jem’s established perceptions about Atticus, as well as the way he naively views his fellow man. Atticus' comforting yet unnerving explanation for Ewell’s foolish behavior (“There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible”) implies that Jem can still admire his father as a patron saint of diplomacy, fairness, and integrity, all the while understanding that most people do not share Atticus’s sense of morality. The realization is shattering for Jem—when he sits alone on the porch that night, he sits on the threshold between the indoors and outdoors, between childish naivety and the more alarming, inequitable world of adults. In this brief and quiet moment, we don’t know exactly what Jem is thinking, but it is likely that he is reflecting on the last days on his idyllic childhood and dreading his transition from child to young adult.
Jem’s maturation from boy to man also surfaces in the famous jail scene. He leads Scout and Dill there to find Atticus, and Jem instantly spots him reading. Here, Atticus is illuminated by the sole light of his lamp amidst the utter darkness surrounding him, which suggests symbolically that Atticus acts as the sole protector of light and truth in an otherwise coldly indifferent, hostile word. The imagery enhances the strength and stability with which the children—and the audience by extension—view Atticus, so it’s no wonder Jem's satisfaction with this image propels them to go home. However, the children’s plans to go home quickly go awry with the arrival of the bigoted local mob. Jem senses the danger of the situation and stands by his father’s side, despite Atticus’s commands to “go home.” Even though Jem disobeys his father, he does so maturely, out of concern for Atticus’s safety, as opposed to a petulant desire to rebel. By choosing to confront the hatred in front of him with his father out of his own will, Jem demonstrates his miraculous transition from boy to man.
The jail scene, however, is dominated by Scout’s still-intact innocence. Her candid performance with Mr. Cunningham successfully disperses the lynch mob, which is an act many critics have deemed unconvincing and overly idealistic: How could Scout remain so blissfully ignorant of what is happening, and how could her Southern politeness successfully persuade a hostile posse to dissipate? This scene may not be grounded in reality, but within the universe of To Kill a Mockingbird, the actions of both Scout and the mob are fitting for their characters. Unlike Jem, Scout is not yet disillusioned by the malevolent and hateful tendencies of man, and she firmly believes in humanity’s essential, vital goodness—a position both the film and the novel share. As such, Mulligan chooses not to depict the mob members as inherently evil; when confronted with the purity of the child of front of them, the men become ashamed of their vile actions and respond with civility. The scene ultimately shows how men, despite being shrouded with racism, are capable of changing their ways and acting on their humanity.
As aforementioned, Scout is not yet old enough to grasp life’s perplexities. When she is taunted at school and fights Cecil Jacobs, she does this out of the sheer wish to defend her father. In other words, she does not understand why Cecil Jacobs’ words are inaccurate, demoralizing, and offensive; she just knows that he insulted her father, which warrants a brawl in her eyes. When Atticus commands her to stop fighting and explains his reasoning for defending Tom at the expense of his own reputation, he acknowledges the inability for Scout to truly comprehend the ingrained prejudices of Maycomb: “There are some things that you're not old enough to understand just yet.” He proceeds to simply claim “I couldn't hold my head up in town. I couldn't even tell you [Scout] or Jem not to do somethin' again” if he refused to defend Tom.
In other words, Atticus values equality and justice, and Tom Robinson, a black man, is just as worthy of his defense as a white man. To Atticus, lawyers should act with honor and defend anyone accused of a crime, regardless of their race, gender, class, or age. If he turned down the case, he would demonstrate prejudices of his own and thereby improperly perform his duties as a role model for Scout and Jem—in which case, he “couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do somethin’ again.” To expect Scout and Jem to adhere to his values and moral code, he must display them himself, and he does this with elegance and integrity. Atticus's ardent defense of Tom additionally sets a notable counterpoint to the pervading bigotry in Maycomb, and generates hope for progress and a change in mindset in the town by extension.
