I believe that Jem was best portrayed in the movie because as I read the book, I picture it in my mind, and Jem seemed relatively close from the book to the movie. In the book, Jem wasn’t really described in detail, but his emotions that were in the book seemed to fit Jem in the movie.

I don’t believe that any characters in the movie didn’t portray the characters from the book, but Dill doesn’t look like what I expected him to look like. He acts like a know-it-all in both the movie and book,

In the book, it seems as if more scene are played out, for example, in the book Scout talks about going to school and narrates from inside the schoolhouse as it’s happening. In the movie, we just skip to the scene where she is fighting Walter Cunningham already. She explains to Jem what happened afterwards, but I still thought it would have been nice to see the school scene.

My favorite scene from the movie was when Jem and Scout were walking home after the play Scout and her class put on. Her costume made me laugh because I thought the ham suit looked cute. This scene was also the best because this was the most intense scene I’ve seen from this whole entire movie. I’d tell you what happens, but that’d ruin the movie for you.

I was a little disappointed by the ending of the movie just because it seemed to kind of end. I enjoy movies that have good endings, otherwise I feel like I wasted two hours of my life. I would have had a scene at the end when it’s summer time, and Jem and Scout talk to Boo Radley, that would have made me happy. At the end of the real movie, Scout just walks him back to his house, and that’s the end. I wanted to see more than that.

In this section, I had the role of the Discussion Director. Our group was assigned to read from chapters 16–20.

During this section, I was thinking about the trial and who was guilty and who was innocent. Tom Robinson sounds like a nice, honest man that wouldn’t harm a woman for any reason. I believe Tom Robinson is innocent, and should be found not guilty. During the trial, Bob Ewell was called up as a witness and claimed that he doesn’t inflict any harm upon Mayella, but when she is called up to the stand, she says he becomes dangerous when he drinks. Also, when Tom Robinson was called up to the stand, he plead something I found correlated with Mr. Ewell. “She reached up an’ kissed me ‘side of th’ face. She says she kissed a grown man before. She says what her papa do to her don’t count.” (194). I thought that was important because Mr. Ewell is Mayella’s father, and she said that her father kisses her, and I believe that that kissing probably leads to other things.

I also picked a passage from page 200, explaining parts of Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s lifestyle. “Dill released the straws and grinned ‘Scout, it’s nothing but Coca-Cola.’” Then Scout asks why Mr. Raymond likes to pretend he drinks whiskey all of the time. “Some folks don’t – like the way I live. I don’t care if they don’t like it. I try to give ‘em a reason. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say  Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey, that’s why he won’t change his ways.” That statement was explaining that if you do something that is “wrongful” in society, you will be frowned upon. Mr. Raymond has an African American wife, and has three half-children. In Maycomb, he would be frowned upon, so he pretends to drink to make the town “go easy” on him. He likes the way he lives, but citizens in the town of Maycomb are mainly against African American folks.

In this week’s section, the trial and the witnesses Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson were the most important events because they were the plaintiff and the defendant, and they each had completely different stories explaining what happened November 21.

If I had to ask the author one question about the book so far, it would have to be: Why did you make the jury side the way they did?

My group’s discussion this week was mainly about the events that were said to have occurred that night. We believe that Tom Robinson is innocent, and Mayella just wanted to make it a trial because she wanted money from him.

I believe once again, that Tom Robinson is not-guilty. Nobody will really know for sure what happened that day, but Tom Robinson’s pleads made more sense than Mayella and her father’s plead. Mayella doesn’t really truly know what respect is. Atticus was talking to her in a nice tone with nice language, but she complained that Atticus was mocking her. She believed that “ma-am” and “Miss Mayella” was to merely make fun of her in front of everyone, obviously saying she has never been treated fairly before.

For the third section of the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, my role was the connector. The third section was from chapter 12 to chapter 15. Connections that I have made with Sheboygan Falls and Maycomb County was that we are both rather small towns and we both have churches. I am not sure whether Sheboygan Falls has “black people” churches, but Maycomb does have one African American church called the First Purchase. At my church I only know of one man who is African American and goes to our church, but that is it. Some towns or cities are so big that they have to have more than one school district, but neither Sheboygan Falls nor Maycomb are large enough to have at least two schools.

One connection I made from my life to their life was the amount of fighting that Jem and Scout go through. Jem and Scout fight almost constantly with each other, just like my brother and I. Jem and Scout’s arguments can get pretty dumb too.

In my life, I have met a few people who remind me of Atticus. Atticus is a wise, courageous, and nice man. He gives Scout and Jem advice, and seems like a great role model in their life, although Aunt Alexandra may not think so.

I have never read anything like this book before. It seems entirely different from my style of reading, but some parts of this book interest me. I want to see Boo Radley, and I also want to know how Jem and Scout will act as they continue to grow. I have also never read anything that was dated before the 2000’s. To Kill a Mockingbird is re-living the post Great Depression era, which is between about 1935-1940.

Something that no one else has made a connection with is the fact that Dill travels form one place to another. I had a friend when I was younger who travelled like Dill. He eventually moved to Texas, where I never heard from him again.

“When Calpurnia stayed overnight with us she slept on a folding cot in the kitchen; that morning it was covered with our Sunday habiliments. She had put so much starch in my dress it came up like a tent when I sat down.”(117) This is a metaphor comparing her dress to a tent. She was describing how solid her dress was.

“Jem gulped like a goldfish, hunched his shoulders and twitched his torso.”(93) The two items being compared is Tim Johnson, the pet of Maycomb, and a goldfish. This comparison is describing how Tim Johnson was acting when Jem and Scout saw him in the street.

One setting in the book is when Christmas arrived and Uncle Jack spent the week with Jem and Scout. Another important setting is Mrs. Dubose’s house. Over Christmas, Francis called Atticus a nigger-lover in front of Scout, and she has been working on ignoring those remarks, but then she forgot all about it and started beating him up. That was important because she thought she would be letting Atticus down if she fought again, but she couldn’t hold it back against Francis, and Uncle Jack then got a talk with Scout and told him the real story, saying he didn’t know what is was like to be a kid.

At Mrs. Dubose’s house, Jem got punished because he destroyed Mrs. Dubose’s front yard and then he had to go read to Mrs. Dubose for a month. This is important because Atticus was trying to teach him a lesson of courage, “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 see it through no matter what.” (112)

The tone in the Christmas setting was anger, because of the argument Scout had with Francis then Uncle Jack. At Mrs. Dubose’s house, the author tried to fill the section with scare, describing her house when Jem and Scout went in it, and when something happened to her while Jem was reading.

Our literary group did a lot better this time then last time. Everyone had their part prepared, and everyone was prepared to share it. We talked about the rabid dog, Christmas time at the Finley’s, and we also discussed Mrs. Dubose, her house, and what was going on in her house when Jem and Scout had to visit.

I learned that Jem has shown a lot of courage in the past few chapters. People at school talk about Atticus, Jem and Scout’s father, being a “[n-word] -lover”, and, while Scout decides to fight to solve the problem, Jem shows courage and walks away from the issue. Scout soon follows in Jem’s example, and ignores the name-callers shortly after. He also shows courage by going into Mrs. Dubose’s house and reading to her for a month. Atticus tehn talks to Mrs. Dubose and she suggests he should visit her for another week, and Jem just sucks it up and hangs in for another week.

In the first section of To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, I was the Illuminator in my literary circle.

The tree by the Rayley’s house that has gifts in the hole represents the changing lifestyle of Scout and Jem. When the tree hole got filled with cement by Mr. Nathan Radley, Scout and Jem began to grow older on the inside and the outside. The author goes into detail, describing what they’re feeling, wearing, doing, etc. For example, when Miss Caroline Fisher, Scout’s teacher, was first mentioned, she was described in perfect detail. “Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop.” (16) Those sentences showed that everything about one character’s self is revealed in the book.

The conflict when Jem, Dill, and Scout go into the Rayley’s backyard is a conflict. Dill and Jem wanted to go into the Radley’s backyard to try to see if they could see Boo Radley, the man who was locked up in his house by his father a long time ago. It was made intense because of the detail that the author put into it. Emotion also helped make this intense. The author ended the conflict by Jem and the rest escaping for back under the fence, and Jem loses his pants crawling back under the fence to escape. The tone of the book has a normal feel to it because some parts are intense, but most moments are like everyday life. Or what would have been normal life in the olden’ days. The author doesn’t make many intense scenes and they live their lives like the same everyday.

 Our literary group had an o.k. discussion. It was the first discussion we’ve ever had, so I believe that the discussions will get better as we go along. We mainly talked about the beginning of the book and how important some parts were. We also talked about Boo Radley’s story of his life and what led up to him being locked up in his house.

I believe that Scout, Jem, and Dill are afraid of Boo mainly because of what they heard of his past, like him being involved in Maycomb’s first and only gang, and him stabbing his father in the back of the leg with a scissors. And I believe it was only adding fuel to their fire when they tried to see him and then they got shot at by Mr. Nathan Radley.