Select five quotes from those offered below or from passages that impress you from the novel not presented here. You are to indicate what character expresses the quote, what the event is that inspires the quote, and what topic/theme is embodied from the statement. Finally, select one of the quotes that will serve as the inspiration for your research paper topic and compose a thesis statement for your research paper. Note that the thesis statement for the research paper often changes as you acquire evidence. You will not be required to complete this exercise again if you alter your thesis statement in the future.
EXAMPLE:
Passage- “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
Character- Atticus Finch
Event- Atticus attempts to explain to his son about the disappointment of the trial’s outcome.
Theme/Topic- Injustice, too often people are ruled by bias rather than truth.
THE QUOTES:
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—” “Sir?” “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
“He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”
“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”
“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ‘em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change.”
“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”
“This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.”
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”
“There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ‘em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest JP court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”
“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.”
“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”
“How could they do it, how could they?” “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep.”
“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses…That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.”
“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.”
“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”
If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time… it’s because he wants to stay inside.