Of course, you are invited to embellish, delete, or adapt the study questions in accordance with knowledge of your students and your sense of how best to explore the novel. The questions presuppose that students have read the novel; but if your students are viewing the teleconference as a preparatory experience for studying it, you can use these materials during or after the reading or viewing of TKM.

CHARACTER

1. Reflect on your reactions to the main characters in To Kill A Mockingbird - Scout, Atticus, Jem, Bill, Calpurnia, Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, Bob Ewell, and Boo Radley. Which of these did you find most likeable? Least likeable? Did any of the characters have some qualities you sympathized with and other qualities you didn't like? Jot down the likeable and unlikeable aspects of each of the characters, and compare your impressions and reasons for them with the responses of your classmates.

2. Literary characters are considered to be "flat" when they are presented by the author as one-sided and unchanging, behaving in ways that are predictable. Characters are considered "round" when they are depicted as having greater complexity and depth, some weaknesses and some strengths, and a wide range of human emotions. Which characters in the Harper Lee novel struck you as being more "flat" or more "round"? Why might an author create flat characters in a given work? Are the minor characters in To Kill A Mockingbird - e.g. Miss Maudie, Calpurnia, Aunt Alexandra, Miss Fisher (the schoolteacher), Nathan Radley, Mrs. Dubose, Mr. Cunningham, Sheriff Tate, and others - one dimensional, or do some have "round" qualities?

3. An important part of the novel is Harper Lee's characterization of the three children - Scout, Jem, and Dill, who gain life experiences and mature as they face different problems and interact with the adults in the novel. Think about your childhood and the way you viewed the other children and the adults in your environment. Discuss how your impressions of people changed or did not change as you gained experience and came to know people better over the years.

4. Many of the charactersin the novel are depicted by the author as classifying each other according to rigid categories. They hold stereotypes about how individuals will behave as a result of their age, gender, race, social status, and other fixed categories. Which characters are the victims of stereotyping? Do any of them break through the behavior expected of them, showing individuality and exposung the falseness of narrowly labelling people?

POINT OF VIEW

1. The novel begins as the voice of a mature adult recalling events from childhood and sometimes shifts to the point of view of a six-year old. Did you notice the shifts occuring? If so, did you find them distracting? How are these perpectives - the knowing adult's and the innocent child's - developed in the narration? What advantages did the author have as a result of being able to move from one perspective to the other?

2. W. E. B. DuBoise speaks of "double-consciousness" - the sense of having to look at oneself through the eyes of others. Which characters in To Kill A Mockingbird are basically forced to look at themselves through the lens of others, being expected to behave as other people want them to behave?

3. Do you believe that the sense of "double consciousness" is still strong in our present society? That is, to what extene are people of different ethnicities, social classes, genders, and age levels essentially defined by others today? To what extent do you feel that you are forced to behave according to other's views of you? How are yo affected when others define you? Consider how the person doing the defining is affected.

4. Is some measure of "double consciousness" inevitable in human relations and in society? Why, or why not?

SETTING

1. Compare the city of Maycomb to the place where you grew up, noting similarities and differences.

2. The story is set in a small town in southern Alabama during the Depression of the 1930s. What aspects of the story seem to be particular to that place and time? What aspects of the story are universal, cutting across time and place? In what ways are the people you know today similar to and different from those in Maycomb?

PLOT

1. Did To Kill A Mockingbird hold your interest? What parts of the story held your interest most strongly? Why? What parts seemed less interesting? Why?

2. What are the chief conflicts in the story? Do they have clear starting points and resolutions? Were any conflicts left unresolved? Were any conflicts resolved in ways that you found disturbing?

3. Many readers see To Kill A Mockingbird as having two parts, one centering on Boo Radley and the other on the trial of Tom Robinson. How were the two stories brought together at the end of the novel? When you were reading the novel, how did you handle the shift of emphasis from Boo Radley to the trial?

SYMBOL

1. Certain objects take on symbolic value in the TKM. That is, an object is used by the author as apart of the setting or narrative, yet that object points to or represents something outside itself. Of course, a central symbol is the mockingbird, described by Miss Maudie as a creature that should never be killed because it is harmless and even provides song for the enjoyment of others. Both Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are basically blameless individuals who are at the mercy of society, yet society is cruel to Boo, and ultimately Tom is murdered. The symbol of the mockingbird also points to Scout, both as an innocent child and as the grown-up narrator, who "sings a song" in telling the story. Can you think of ways in which the following function as symbols in TKM ?

   the mad dog	(community gone mad;/berzerk)
   the treehouse	( A retreat from the world that gives oversight)
   Camellias	(the old genteel South, living in the past)
   the gun	(an abuse of power - Atticus' view; a means of power - the lynch-mob view)
   the cemented hole in the tree	(stories and "singers" or storytellers being thwarted)
   columns on buildings	(persistence of the old South; a facade; anomalies)
   Atticus' pocket watch	( Love of and absent mother)

2. Can you assign symbolic meaning to any of these objects in terms of the present day? How do these present day symbolic meanings differ from the meanings that those symbols held in the novel?

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