CHAPTER+11

In Chapter 11 of **//To Kill a Mockingbird//** we are introduced to a new character. It is a women named Mrs. Dubose. Page 99, "Mrs. Dubose lived alone except a Negro girl in constant attendance, two doors up the street from us in a house with steep front steps and dog-trot hall. She was very old: she spent most of each day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair. It was rumored that she kept a CSA pistol concealed among her numerous shawls and wraps." Mrs. Dubose was a lady who did not have trouble speaking what was on her mind. She had an opinion on everything and didn't have trouble stating it. Through out the chapter she is very mean to Jem and Scout. She open calls their father a "Nigger Lover." At one point in the chapter she gets on Jems nerves so badly that he rebels. Page 103, “He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down.” When Atticus finds our about this he comes to Jem and gets very angry with him and says, page 103 and 104, “Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose.” After Atticus said this Jem went to Mrs. Dubose’s house to apologize and she asked if he would read to her for the next month. Jem had no interest in reading to her, however Atticus made him. Everyday Jem and Scout would go to Mrs. Dubose house and listen to her complain about their father being a “Nigger Lover.” Until she told them they were done. One month later Atticus got a call saying that she was dead. She had a addiction to morphine. Page 112, “She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.” The theme of the chapter is Atticus trying to show Jem and Scout that courage doesn’t mean holding a gun in your hand. symbols: alarm clook which symbols when the reading session is over. Scout was the POV. Could be Jems toy steam engine