To Kill a Mockingbird Quiz: some possible answers
1. An easy one to start: In the USA, “football” is a gridiron game rather like a highly structured form of rugby. Playing American football is a good way to gain acceptance in school; Lee is also alerting us from the beginning to the fact that robust physical activity is important to Scout’s brother.
2. “to assuage” means to soften, to mitigate, to allay.
Jem had feared that his broken arm would mean the end of football for him, but once it had mended he was reassured that his fears had been mistaken.
Our response to unfamiliar words plays a significant part in our developing competence in handling language and appreciating literature. Rather than assuming what words mean as we skip through them, we should make use of a good dictionary to work out what the writer really wants us to know.
If we simply guess from the context, at best we’ll probably miss subtleties while at worst we can interpret meaning completely wrongly.
3. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) fought as a boy in the American War of Independence or “Revolution” (1775-1883), held major offices in the state of Tennessee (including Judge in the Tennessee Supreme Court) and proved a successful general in the war against the British (1812-15). Jackson was elected President of the United States in 1828, serving two terms until 1836.
Jackson was one of the leading campaigners against the indigenous peoples (or “indians”), of the continent, annexing the lands of several “tribes” during various campaigns. To most Southerners, however, he was an admired hero responsible for much of the colonisation and development of their states.
Harper Lee is tapping into the respect for Jackson shared by most people of Alabama, who knew him by his nickname of “Old Hickory” - after a tough species of tree.
4. In 1812, Andrew Jackson led a campaign against the Creek peoples (“indians”) who were allies of the British in Alabama (which was not yet an American state). His decisive victory at Horseshoe Bend on the Alabama River in 1814 secured the territory for the Americans, subdued the Creeks and led the way to Alabama’s joining the Union in 1819.
Harper Lee embraces the wordplay offered to her if she refers to the Alabama as a “creek” (strictly, in American English, the tributary of a river).
5. “The Alabama” is the name given to a major river of the state of Alabama once it has passed through Montgomery flowing south. As the river approaches Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico, it is renamed the Mobile River.
6. The battle was fought between the English “Saxon” army led by King Harold (Harold Godwinson) and the “Norman” army led by Duke William of Normandy (named after his victory “William the Conqueror”)
7. The Battle of Hastings was fought in October 1066.
Lee is using irony here to allude to the importance Southerners attached to family history. She has deliberately opened To Kill a Mockingbird with an account of Scout’s ancestors who can be traced back “only” to Simon Finch. Finch had taken advantage of Jackson’s victory of 1814 to claim a part of the land the Creeks had previously occupied.
The likelihood of anyone’s tracing a genuine unbroken line back to 1066 seems remote, though many were prepared to stretch the truth. Lee’s throwaway phrase “on either side” tells us that it did not matter to them whether they were from “English” or “French” stock, as long as they could boast a long ancestry. It is also a reminder that many of the early European settlers in the territory had emigrated from France.
8. The epithet “apothecary” has been refined from referring to “a person who keeps a store of spices, drugs, preserves etc.” to “a druggist or pharmaceutical chemist.” It tells us that Simon Finch was a man of at least a little learning.
9. “piety” means “godliness” or “devoutness.”
Lee wants to undermine any belief we may hold that religious people are necessarily wholly virtuous: Finch was more tight-fisted than he was holy.
10. Methodism was a popular religious movement which demanded high standards of virtue from its followers, who would through their own efforts achieve Heaven or be punished with damnation in Hell. Methodism had its origins among the urban poor of England.
11. John Wesley (1703-91) was ordained as a priest in the Church of England, but his enthusiasm for preaching salvation to working-class neighbourhoods alarmed the Established Church, which began to close doors against him. His highly popular zeal aroused huge numbers of followers who founded new "Methodist" chapels in which to follow his teachings. Wesley visited Georgia (1735-8) then later ordained Francis Asbury to spread the word to the USA. He was a prolific writer: Lee is assuming that Simon Finch would have read at least some of the most popular of Wesley's publications.
12. A "stricture" is an adverse criticism. Harper Lee imagines that her readers will have a working knowledge of Wesley's negative attitudes towards ostentation.
13. It is a temptation to the wealthy to pin on ornaments of precious medals and to wear expensive clothing. Finch's spiritual master John Wesley denounced such practices.
14. Wesley had condemned slavery ("human chattels" are people owned as though they were objects of property). Lee is being subtly caustic here about Finch's selectiveness in following the instructions of the founder of the Methodism he claimed to follow. By implication, we are being alerted to the possibility that those characters in "To Kill a Mockingbird" who place a strong emphasis on virtue are themselves guilty of hypocrisy in highlighting certain rules and forgetting others in their interpretation of what is good and what is bad. One of the central themes of the novel will be that of the racial segregation in the South which followed the ending of slavery after the Civil War.
15. Another easy one: Simon Finch's descendants included more females than males.
16. The traditional crop of the South was the cotton plant, which before the Civil War was traditionally sown, tended and harvested by enslaved individuals. The turning of the cotton bolls into cloth would be done away from the plantation - probably in one of the Northern states.
17. Finch's Landing was a comparatively small landholding. Some plantations were huge, requiring hundreds of workers.
During the period (before 1865) when the workers were enslaved, the law did not allow them to leave; after emancipation, most Southern states introduced new laws restricting the employment of their new freedmen, while economic pressures often made leaving difficult. Consequently, many people would spend the majority of their lives living on, and getting their immediate needs served by, one plantation: making Lee's metaphor of "empire" quite appropriate.
18 & 19. Alabama is very hot. Lee is being cute here: to the majority of the inhabitants of the South, ice would seem a rare luxury. Those who regarded themselves as "quality" would insist that their drinks should contain ice (shipped in from elsewhere) almost as a sign that their superiority was preserved within a more sensitive constitution.
20. The Pentameter GCSE Tutor recommends a good atlas. Mobile is a seaport on Alabama's South coast.
21. Between 1861 and 1865, the Southern states and the Northern states engaged in a bitter war which ended with the defeat of the South. There were many causes, but the one best remembered by non-Americans is the attempt by the North to end slavery.
The name commonly given to the conflict, the "Civil War", was resented by many southerners, who insisted that their Confederacy of Southern states had ceded from the Union before the war began, making them an independent territory which was therefore no longer a part of the "United States of America".
The memory of the war burned on deeply in the hearts of succeeding generations of Southerners. The South remained economically devasted for decades, and a myth arose depicting an idealised happy society which many liked to imagine had existed before the war.
Harper Lee is choosing her words carefully here. She does not wish to endorse any entrenched position, so employs the mild abstract noun "disturbance" as a form of understatement about a period which all her American readers knew was probably the most painful in all their history.
22. The smaller cotton farmers of the South were devastated by the war.
Most had given much of their wealth to support the Confederate effort, and many were heavily in debt.
Monoculture (reliance upon a single crop) puts a region too much at the mercy of the market, and after the war international cotton prices fell, provoking widespread poverty.
The labouring poor - both the newly-emancipated former slaves and those who could trace their ancestry back to Europe - were to suffer generations of misery. Economic desperation created a situation ripe for racial polarisation.
23. Montgomery is the capital city of the State of Alabama (although it is not the largest city).
24. Boston is the capital city of the State of Massachusetts.
25. Does the Pentameter's GCSE Tutor ask a trivial question? Au contraire, mes amis! While the South remained to a large degree trapped in a time-warp, many Northern states put their energies into developing the material and intellectual potential of their country. Boston developed into a major economic and cultural centre, with its university of Harvard becoming internationally respected.
While Atticus Finch did his best to survive in the depressed South, his brother was able to benefit from exposure to all the possibilities of world-wide learning.
To 21st Century European readers, the line: "... my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine" seems merely to convey information about geography and employment. To Harper Lee's intended American readership, this line told of two situations which were worlds apart. (see answers 28 and 32).
26. Taciturn people are reserved, uncommunicative and disinclined towards conversation.
27. "Trot-lines" are used in fishing: a longish line is lightly buoyed, perhaps with floats, and baited hooks attached at intervals. Little energy is required.
28. Each state in the USA has its own system of laws. Consequently, a lawyer who has qualified to practise in one state would not be allowed to practise in another without passing a further set of exams.
The USA also has its nation-wide system of laws ("Federal" Law) which in theory cover different topics from those covered by the states. However, most lawyers would find themselves working, like Atticus, with the statutes of their own state.
29. The "Code of Alabama" is the set of laws which have been passed by the Alabama State legislature.
30. It would appear that the Haverford brothers considered that the blacksmith had wrongly taken a horse away from them (possibly in lieu of a debt they owed him) and had killed him while three other people were watching.
31. During his first five years as a lawyer, Atticus had tried to save money and not to spend too much.
32. Once qualified, a doctor was more-or-less free to practise anywhere within the United States. In fact, an American medical degree would probably at that time have opened doors in several countries overseas.
33. Harper Lee loves her euphemisms. Simon Finch - with his wife - produced many female offspring whose marriages to various Maycomb townsfolk initiated a web of descendents. We must assume that for the family name to carry on, Simon Finch must have fathered at least one son.
34. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set during the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. After the "Wall Street Crash" of 1929, businesses had collapsed, the American economy had come to a standstill and unemployment had struck not only the poor of city and country but also much of the urban and rural middle classes. Alabama had been one of the hardest hit. The US Federal government and its President seemed paralyzed.
35. On 4 March 1933, a new President made his inaugural address to the nation, vowing that he would bring an end to the Depression:
"This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
President Franklin D Roosevelt set about to rescue the nation from its slough of despond. The words came first, but throughout Lee's book we can see the Federal government's influence creeping into Maycombe - not least through its new school teachers.
36. Calpurnia was Julius Caesar's last wife, whom he married when he was 41 and she was 18. Her experience with Caesar was not generally a happy one.
37. It was famously said of Calpurnia that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion".
For Harper Lee's American incarnation of the character, living in a house with a widowed mature man could easily have set tongues wagging. There is no implication whatsoever that the relationship between Atticus and Calpurnia was anything other than proper, a fact which Lee's choice of name helps to reinforce. ("Atticus" was the name of a respected Roman intellectual and writer.)
38. "tyrannical" means "acting in an oppressively cruel or severe manner" (like a tyrant). Harper Lee's early descriptions of Calpurnia are as seen through the eyes of the infant Scout, and not sympathetic. As the novel progresses, Calpurnia emerges as one of the stalwarts of the town, increasingly respected by the growing girl.
39. Lafayette was a French soldier and revolutionary who famously fought for the American side against the British during the American Revolution. Harper Lee cannily uses this name to identify Mrs Dubose's ancestors as French and pro-American, although we do not necessarily assume a direct line of descent. Dubose may well be a corruption, or Anglicization, of Du Bois.
40. "Collard" is a US term for the "colewort" - a heartless variety of cabbage. Dill, the original Cabbage Patch Kid, was modelled on the boy who later became the noted writer Truman Capote.
Return to questions at: The Pentameter Reads Novels
2. “to assuage” means to soften, to mitigate, to allay.
Jem had feared that his broken arm would mean the end of football for him, but once it had mended he was reassured that his fears had been mistaken.
Our response to unfamiliar words plays a significant part in our developing competence in handling language and appreciating literature. Rather than assuming what words mean as we skip through them, we should make use of a good dictionary to work out what the writer really wants us to know.
If we simply guess from the context, at best we’ll probably miss subtleties while at worst we can interpret meaning completely wrongly.
3. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) fought as a boy in the American War of Independence or “Revolution” (1775-1883), held major offices in the state of Tennessee (including Judge in the Tennessee Supreme Court) and proved a successful general in the war against the British (1812-15). Jackson was elected President of the United States in 1828, serving two terms until 1836.
Jackson was one of the leading campaigners against the indigenous peoples (or “indians”), of the continent, annexing the lands of several “tribes” during various campaigns. To most Southerners, however, he was an admired hero responsible for much of the colonisation and development of their states.
Harper Lee is tapping into the respect for Jackson shared by most people of Alabama, who knew him by his nickname of “Old Hickory” - after a tough species of tree.
4. In 1812, Andrew Jackson led a campaign against the Creek peoples (“indians”) who were allies of the British in Alabama (which was not yet an American state). His decisive victory at Horseshoe Bend on the Alabama River in 1814 secured the territory for the Americans, subdued the Creeks and led the way to Alabama’s joining the Union in 1819.
Harper Lee embraces the wordplay offered to her if she refers to the Alabama as a “creek” (strictly, in American English, the tributary of a river).
5. “The Alabama” is the name given to a major river of the state of Alabama once it has passed through Montgomery flowing south. As the river approaches Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico, it is renamed the Mobile River.
6. The battle was fought between the English “Saxon” army led by King Harold (Harold Godwinson) and the “Norman” army led by Duke William of Normandy (named after his victory “William the Conqueror”)
7. The Battle of Hastings was fought in October 1066.
Lee is using irony here to allude to the importance Southerners attached to family history. She has deliberately opened To Kill a Mockingbird with an account of Scout’s ancestors who can be traced back “only” to Simon Finch. Finch had taken advantage of Jackson’s victory of 1814 to claim a part of the land the Creeks had previously occupied.
The likelihood of anyone’s tracing a genuine unbroken line back to 1066 seems remote, though many were prepared to stretch the truth. Lee’s throwaway phrase “on either side” tells us that it did not matter to them whether they were from “English” or “French” stock, as long as they could boast a long ancestry. It is also a reminder that many of the early European settlers in the territory had emigrated from France.
8. The epithet “apothecary” has been refined from referring to “a person who keeps a store of spices, drugs, preserves etc.” to “a druggist or pharmaceutical chemist.” It tells us that Simon Finch was a man of at least a little learning.
9. “piety” means “godliness” or “devoutness.”
Lee wants to undermine any belief we may hold that religious people are necessarily wholly virtuous: Finch was more tight-fisted than he was holy.
10. Methodism was a popular religious movement which demanded high standards of virtue from its followers, who would through their own efforts achieve Heaven or be punished with damnation in Hell. Methodism had its origins among the urban poor of England.
11. John Wesley (1703-91) was ordained as a priest in the Church of England, but his enthusiasm for preaching salvation to working-class neighbourhoods alarmed the Established Church, which began to close doors against him. His highly popular zeal aroused huge numbers of followers who founded new "Methodist" chapels in which to follow his teachings. Wesley visited Georgia (1735-8) then later ordained Francis Asbury to spread the word to the USA. He was a prolific writer: Lee is assuming that Simon Finch would have read at least some of the most popular of Wesley's publications.
12. A "stricture" is an adverse criticism. Harper Lee imagines that her readers will have a working knowledge of Wesley's negative attitudes towards ostentation.
13. It is a temptation to the wealthy to pin on ornaments of precious medals and to wear expensive clothing. Finch's spiritual master John Wesley denounced such practices.
14. Wesley had condemned slavery ("human chattels" are people owned as though they were objects of property). Lee is being subtly caustic here about Finch's selectiveness in following the instructions of the founder of the Methodism he claimed to follow. By implication, we are being alerted to the possibility that those characters in "To Kill a Mockingbird" who place a strong emphasis on virtue are themselves guilty of hypocrisy in highlighting certain rules and forgetting others in their interpretation of what is good and what is bad. One of the central themes of the novel will be that of the racial segregation in the South which followed the ending of slavery after the Civil War.
15. Another easy one: Simon Finch's descendants included more females than males.
16. The traditional crop of the South was the cotton plant, which before the Civil War was traditionally sown, tended and harvested by enslaved individuals. The turning of the cotton bolls into cloth would be done away from the plantation - probably in one of the Northern states.
17. Finch's Landing was a comparatively small landholding. Some plantations were huge, requiring hundreds of workers.
During the period (before 1865) when the workers were enslaved, the law did not allow them to leave; after emancipation, most Southern states introduced new laws restricting the employment of their new freedmen, while economic pressures often made leaving difficult. Consequently, many people would spend the majority of their lives living on, and getting their immediate needs served by, one plantation: making Lee's metaphor of "empire" quite appropriate.
18 & 19. Alabama is very hot. Lee is being cute here: to the majority of the inhabitants of the South, ice would seem a rare luxury. Those who regarded themselves as "quality" would insist that their drinks should contain ice (shipped in from elsewhere) almost as a sign that their superiority was preserved within a more sensitive constitution.
20. The Pentameter GCSE Tutor recommends a good atlas. Mobile is a seaport on Alabama's South coast.
21. Between 1861 and 1865, the Southern states and the Northern states engaged in a bitter war which ended with the defeat of the South. There were many causes, but the one best remembered by non-Americans is the attempt by the North to end slavery.
The name commonly given to the conflict, the "Civil War", was resented by many southerners, who insisted that their Confederacy of Southern states had ceded from the Union before the war began, making them an independent territory which was therefore no longer a part of the "United States of America".
The memory of the war burned on deeply in the hearts of succeeding generations of Southerners. The South remained economically devasted for decades, and a myth arose depicting an idealised happy society which many liked to imagine had existed before the war.
Harper Lee is choosing her words carefully here. She does not wish to endorse any entrenched position, so employs the mild abstract noun "disturbance" as a form of understatement about a period which all her American readers knew was probably the most painful in all their history.
22. The smaller cotton farmers of the South were devastated by the war.
Most had given much of their wealth to support the Confederate effort, and many were heavily in debt.
Monoculture (reliance upon a single crop) puts a region too much at the mercy of the market, and after the war international cotton prices fell, provoking widespread poverty.
The labouring poor - both the newly-emancipated former slaves and those who could trace their ancestry back to Europe - were to suffer generations of misery. Economic desperation created a situation ripe for racial polarisation.
23. Montgomery is the capital city of the State of Alabama (although it is not the largest city).
24. Boston is the capital city of the State of Massachusetts.
25. Does the Pentameter's GCSE Tutor ask a trivial question? Au contraire, mes amis! While the South remained to a large degree trapped in a time-warp, many Northern states put their energies into developing the material and intellectual potential of their country. Boston developed into a major economic and cultural centre, with its university of Harvard becoming internationally respected.
While Atticus Finch did his best to survive in the depressed South, his brother was able to benefit from exposure to all the possibilities of world-wide learning.
To 21st Century European readers, the line: "... my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine" seems merely to convey information about geography and employment. To Harper Lee's intended American readership, this line told of two situations which were worlds apart. (see answers 28 and 32).
26. Taciturn people are reserved, uncommunicative and disinclined towards conversation.
27. "Trot-lines" are used in fishing: a longish line is lightly buoyed, perhaps with floats, and baited hooks attached at intervals. Little energy is required.
28. Each state in the USA has its own system of laws. Consequently, a lawyer who has qualified to practise in one state would not be allowed to practise in another without passing a further set of exams.
The USA also has its nation-wide system of laws ("Federal" Law) which in theory cover different topics from those covered by the states. However, most lawyers would find themselves working, like Atticus, with the statutes of their own state.
29. The "Code of Alabama" is the set of laws which have been passed by the Alabama State legislature.
30. It would appear that the Haverford brothers considered that the blacksmith had wrongly taken a horse away from them (possibly in lieu of a debt they owed him) and had killed him while three other people were watching.
31. During his first five years as a lawyer, Atticus had tried to save money and not to spend too much.
32. Once qualified, a doctor was more-or-less free to practise anywhere within the United States. In fact, an American medical degree would probably at that time have opened doors in several countries overseas.
33. Harper Lee loves her euphemisms. Simon Finch - with his wife - produced many female offspring whose marriages to various Maycomb townsfolk initiated a web of descendents. We must assume that for the family name to carry on, Simon Finch must have fathered at least one son.
34. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set during the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. After the "Wall Street Crash" of 1929, businesses had collapsed, the American economy had come to a standstill and unemployment had struck not only the poor of city and country but also much of the urban and rural middle classes. Alabama had been one of the hardest hit. The US Federal government and its President seemed paralyzed.
35. On 4 March 1933, a new President made his inaugural address to the nation, vowing that he would bring an end to the Depression:
"This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
President Franklin D Roosevelt set about to rescue the nation from its slough of despond. The words came first, but throughout Lee's book we can see the Federal government's influence creeping into Maycombe - not least through its new school teachers.
36. Calpurnia was Julius Caesar's last wife, whom he married when he was 41 and she was 18. Her experience with Caesar was not generally a happy one.
37. It was famously said of Calpurnia that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion".
For Harper Lee's American incarnation of the character, living in a house with a widowed mature man could easily have set tongues wagging. There is no implication whatsoever that the relationship between Atticus and Calpurnia was anything other than proper, a fact which Lee's choice of name helps to reinforce. ("Atticus" was the name of a respected Roman intellectual and writer.)
38. "tyrannical" means "acting in an oppressively cruel or severe manner" (like a tyrant). Harper Lee's early descriptions of Calpurnia are as seen through the eyes of the infant Scout, and not sympathetic. As the novel progresses, Calpurnia emerges as one of the stalwarts of the town, increasingly respected by the growing girl.
39. Lafayette was a French soldier and revolutionary who famously fought for the American side against the British during the American Revolution. Harper Lee cannily uses this name to identify Mrs Dubose's ancestors as French and pro-American, although we do not necessarily assume a direct line of descent. Dubose may well be a corruption, or Anglicization, of Du Bois.
40. "Collard" is a US term for the "colewort" - a heartless variety of cabbage. Dill, the original Cabbage Patch Kid, was modelled on the boy who later became the noted writer Truman Capote.
Return to questions at: The Pentameter Reads Novels
posted by Prof Pentameter at 8:28 pm
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