To Kill a Mockingbird Ch. 10: The Mad Dog

Summary

The children think Atticus is feeble. He is nearly fifty. He works in an office, wears glasses, and will not play football with the other fathers. He does not hunt, fish, drink, or smoke in the ways that count as manhood on their street. Even the air-rifles he gives them do not help. He would rather they shot tin cans than birds. If they must shoot birds, they may go after blue jays. They are not to kill a mockingbird. That, he says, is a sin. Miss Maudie explains why. Mockingbirds do no harm. They do not strip gardens or ruin crops. They only make music. To kill one is to punish a creature for the one gift it offers. The children still half mistake that gentleness for weakness.

One afternoon Calpurnia sees a dog walking strangely down their street. It is Tim Johnson, a dog they know from ordinary mornings, now moving as if the ground kept shifting. Calpurnia knows rabies. She telephones Atticus, then runs to warn the neighbours, banging even on the Radley door so that house will not be left asleep. She orders the children inside. The mad dog comes on, slow and public. Heck Tate arrives with a rifle. Atticus arrives behind him. The street empties onto porches.

Heck will not take the shot. The distance is long, the dog is still moving, and the sheriff knows who the better marksman is. He hands Atticus the rifle. Atticus does not want it. He takes it, drops his glasses in the street, and fires once. Tim Johnson falls. The children stare as if a stranger had stepped out of his clothes. Miss Maudie tells them what Atticus never did. In his youth he was the best shot in the county. People called him One-Shot Finch. He put the gun down because a gift that lets you kill at a distance is not a talent he wanted to live inside. Scout wants to take the name to school. Jem stops her. They should not advertise it. Atticus is a gentleman, and Jem means to be one too. The boy who thought his father feeble has a new measure: strength that does not need an audience, and a mockingbird rule that now sits beside a dead dog in the street.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Refusing to Advertise the Hard Shot

A talent that can harm is not automatically a thing to live inside or to brag about. Atticus drops his glasses, kills the mad dog in one shot, and Jem will not let Scout take the old name One-Shot to school.

When you or someone you love does the one job the street needed, keep the story small enough that the skill does not become a costume.

Coming Up in Chapter 11

Mrs Dubose spends her days on the porch insulting the children and Atticus. Jem snaps, knocks the heads off her camellias, and is sent back to read to her. After she dies, a white camellia arrives, and Atticus names a harder kind of courage.

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Chapter overview

382 wordsexcerpt

Chapter 10

The Mad Dog

Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Hold the Rule Beside the Shot

On one page write the mockingbird rule in your own words, then write what Atticus does with Heck's rifle. Draw a line between the two only where this chapter gives you one. Finish with one sentence: what kind of killing is forbidden, and what kind is the street's last option?

Consider:

•Why does putting the gun down for years matter as much as the one shot?
•What would Scout's schoolyard brag have done to that decision?
•Where in your life is there a harmless 'mockingbird' you have treated as a target, and a hard job you have refused because it would not look like manhood?

Journaling Prompt

Write about a quiet skill you or a parent put down on purpose. What audience were you refusing, and what one moment would still make you pick the tool up?

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Summary