 |
| Level 5 | Level 6 | |||
| Level 8 | Level 9 | Level 10 | Level 11 | Level 12 |
| Home |
To Kill a Mockingbird
by
Harper Lee
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.
In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks,
the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black
dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked
flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s
stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after
their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with
frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled
in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day
was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there
was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to
see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism
for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had
nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town – Atticus, Jem and I,
plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played
with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
| Home |