Chapters 18-21 Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper to receive credit.
1. What does Atticus show in his cross-examination of Sheriff Tate?
2. What do you learn from Bob Ewell’s evidence?
3. Why does Atticus ask Bob Ewell to write out his name? What does the jury see when he does this?
4. Is Mayella like her father or different from him? In what ways?
5. What might be the reason for Mayella crying in court? What evidence from the text
supports your thoughts?
6. How does Mayella react to Atticus’s politeness? Is she used to people being polite?
7. What do we learn indirectly of the home life of the Ewell family in chapter 18?
8. In chapter 19, how well does Mr. Gilmer prove Tom’s guilt in the eyes of the reader (you) and in the eyes of the jury? Can you suggest why these might be different?
9. What made Tom visit the Ewell’s house in the first place?
10. Why does Scout think Mayella Ewell was “the loneliest person in the world”?
11. In your own words explain Mayella’s relationship with her father.
12. What was Tom’s mistake during his testimony?
13. How does Link Deas defend Tom? Why does he do this?
14. How does Dill respond to Mr. Gilmer’s cross examination of Tom during the trial? Why is this, in your opinion?
15. Scout says that “Mr. Dolphus Raymond was an evil man.” Is she right? Why or why not?
16. Why does Dolphus Raymond only pretend to be drinking whiskey and stay drunk?
17. In his closing argument, what does Atticus claim is the thing that Mayella has done wrong? In that same closing argument, what does he say is our society’s “Great Equalizer?”
18. What does Jem expect the verdict to be? Does Atticus think the same?
19. What is unusual about how long it takes the jury to reach a verdict? Is the verdict predictable or not?
20. As Scout waits for the verdict, she thinks of earlier events. What are these and how
do they remind us of the novel’s central themes?
21. At the end of chapter 21, why do the people in the balcony stand up?