Characters Flashcards
Scout Finch
Originally named Jean Louise Finch,
Scout is the narrator.
Jem Finch
Scout’s older brother,
Atticus FInch
Scout and Jem’s father,
Atticus is a lawyer in Maycomb County
When he undertakes to defend Tom Robinson, accused of rape
He is ethical and fair in his work and his home,
Dill Harris
Charles Baker Harris (Dill) is the little boy who spends the summers with his aunt next door to the Finch family. Dill is Scout and Jem’s dearest friend
Spend the summers playing
Try find ways to make Boo Radley come out.
Calpurnia
BLack woman who cooks for the Finch family
Calpurnia is like a mother mother in the family
Scout’s mother died when Scout was only two.
Boo Radley
Boo Radley (Arthur) is the object of fascination for Jem, Scout, and Dill.
He is a recluse who has remained in the house down the street from the Finch house for years.
When he was younger he got into some trouble when he became involved with a group of rowdy kids from Old Sarum.
One night they resisted arrest by Maycomb County’s beadle and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. After that, Arthur’s father, Mr. Radley, took him home and he wasn’t seen again for fifteen years.
But it was said that one day Boo Radley stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors while cutting newspaper clippings for his scrapbook.
For this he was locked in the courthouse basement for many years before he came home again. From these stories learned from gossiping neighbors, Jem, Scout, and Dill made ghost stories of Boo Radley
Bob Ewell
Father of the bunch of Ewells who only attend school on the first day so the truancy lady will leave them alone. He is an alcoholic who poaches game to feed his family He spends whatever money they have on booze.
He accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter and has him thrown in jail,
and although the whole town knows the Ewells are not to be trusted, Tom Robinson is convicted because he’s black.
Tom Robinson
Tom is a respectable, humble, kind Negro whom Atticus is defending against the charge that he raped Mayella Ewell, daughter of Bob Ewell.
Atticus knows he will lose because Tom is black, but he also knows that Tom is innocent and that he must defend him.
Tom was only trying to help Mayella because no one else would, but she made advances that he refused and her father saw them.
She claimed that Tom raped her and beat her, but there was no way he could have done it. All of her bruises were on the right side of her face, but Tom’s left hand was a withered and useless appendage he’d caught in a cotton gin as a child.
Tom was sent to a work prison after his conviction and Atticus was expecting a new trial soon, but Tom was shot trying to escape the prison before Atticus could get him out of jail.
Miss Caroline
Miss Caroline is Scout’s young first-grade teacher who gets on Scout’s bad side by telling her that she can’t read with Atticus anymore because he doesn’t know how to teach.
She also whips Scout on the first day of school because she misunderstands when Scout tells her that Walter Cunningham is poor and that’s why he doesn’t have a lunch.
Miss Caroline had a trying day that day because not only was Scout unintentionally causing her problems, but she also had a run-in with Burris Ewell who cursed her and made her cry before he left the school that afternoon.
Walter Cunningham
Walter is the son of a local farmer whom Atticus helped with a legal problem regarding his land.
The Cunninghams are a poor family who pays their debts with the yield of their crops.
Scout gets in trouble for explaining that Walter won’t borrow any money for lunch from Miss Caroline because he can’t pay her back.
After Jem rescues Walter from Scout’s abuse on the playground later that day, Walter goes home with them for lunch and gets Scout into trouble again because she questions him when he pours molasses all over his lunch.
Burris Ewell
Burris Ewell makes his appearance on Scout’s first day of school.
Miss Caroline notices a ‘cootie’ crawling in his hair, and when she sends the filthy child home to bathe and wash his hair, he curses her and tells her that he’s done his time by coming to the first day of school.
He has been to the first day of first grade for three years, and he never shows up again after that.
All of the Ewell kids do this.
He challenges Miss Caroline to make him stay and then reduces her to tears with all sorts of horrible insults when she sends him away.
He comes from the wretched Ewell family of Maycomb County, which everyone leaves to their own filth and rancor.
Miss Stephanie Crawford
Miss Stephanie lives in the same neighborhood as the Finch family.
She is a gossip and a busybody tattletale.
Miss Stephanie is one of the main sources for stories about Boo Radley.
Miss Maudie Atkinson
Miss Maudie is a neighbor who allowed Jem and Scout free reign of her yard as long as they stayed out of the flowers she worked so hard to maintain.
She was always out in her yard working during the daytime and looking like an elegant lady on her front porch in the evenings.
She had grown up with Atticus and his brother, Jack, and she and Scout became close one summer when Jem and Dill often excluded Scout from their games. Miss Maudie’s house burns down on the coldest night anyone can remember, and that’s when Boo Radley sneaks up behind Scout and covers her with a blanket without her even knowing he is there.
Nathan Radley
Nathan Radley is Boo’s older brother who moved back to Maycomb County from Pensacola when his father died.
Mr. Radley
Mr. Radley was Boo and Nathan’s father, a very religious, strict man who walked to town and back home once a day and never spoke to anyone when they greeted him. He died when Jem and Scout were a few years younger, but Boo didn’t even come out of the house then.