TKAM Character Relationship

Dill and Frances both know Scout, but don’t live near her. Both of these boys need to travel a far way to get to Maycomb, but they have different perspectives about the people who live there. Francis, the cousin of Scout thinks she, Atticus, and Dill are losers who don’t act the way they should. From the conversation we read between Frances and Scout, we learn that Francis doesn't like Dill and thinks he is a “runt”. So far, we don’t know how Dill feels about Frances, but they are no doubt not friends. Frances is a very opinionated eight year old, who knows who he doesn’t like and makes sure they know it. He informed Scout that her father was not responsible for his children and lets them “run around like stray dogs”. Dill is a lot more respectful than Francis, even if he may be more unfortunate than him. Dill even asked Scout to marry him, which was kind even if it was a little strange at their age. Francis wouldn’t even say anything nice to Scout, only hurtful words would spill from his mouth. It seems like Dill and Francis are opposites, likely to never become friends.

Dill and Francis have very different relationship with Scout. Scout looks forward to Dill coming every summer and he could very possibly be the only thing that keeps her going all school year. At the end of their school year, Scout said, “Summer was the best season… but most of all, summer was Dill.” Summer is when Dill came and Dill was a reason they awaited the summers so greatly. During the summer Dill, Scout, and Jem played together and never purposely tried to hurt each other, even if they did sometimes. But, at Christmastime, Francis came with his grandmother, Scout’s Aunt Alexandria. To Scout, Francis was a completely different situation. Scout and Jem loved the Christmas season, except for one thing. “A flip of the coin revealed the uncompromising lineaments of Aunt Alexandra and Francis.” Francis is the part of the holiday season the Scout doesn’t like, which shows that they don’t have a good relationship, unlike her and Dill.

Both Dill and Francis have an effect on Scout, both positive and negative. Overall, Francis has a negative effect on Scout. Scout never looks forward to seeing Francis and Francis brings out the worst in Scout. After one conversation with Francis, Scout started fighting and swearing, when she had promised the people who she cares about that she wouldn’t do it anymore. It seems like if it weren’t for Francis, she would not be so aggressive towards others. Dill also has a bit of a negative effect on Scout, even if it isn’t as much of a negative as Francis’. Scout is mostly happy when Dill is around, but she also becomes sad or frustrated when he doesn’t pay attention to her. If Dill wasn’t there, Scout obviously wouldn’t care if Dill wasn’t hanging out with her, and she would have Jem to herself. Dill also may be a slightly bad influence on Scout since he is a bit of troublemaker, and gets Scout to do the bad things also. Dill has an overall more positive effect on Scout compare to Francis. Dill makes Scout happy and keeps her from fighting with people. These two characters show the differences of people people can have in their life.

Another pair of characters that are related to one another but are complete opposites are Aunt Alexandra and Atticus. Yes, they grew up in the same house, but they are very different from one another. Scout even says, “she had been swapped at birth, that my grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead of a Finch.” Their differences are even noticeable to an eight year old, which means they must be pretty different. Aunt Alexandra, Francis’ grandmother, thinks Scout and Jem are dirty, not well taken care of children who lack respect for adults. She must feel very strongly about it if her eight year old grandson knows about it and is talking about it to his cousin, Scout. “like Grandma says, so it ain’t your fault. I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger lover besides, but I’m here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family.” Atticus is a gentle man who wouldn’t purposely hurt anyone, unlike his sister.

Atticus is a very supportive character in “To Kill A Mockingbird” Scout. He tries to help her in any way he can, whether with fighting, swearing, or anything any questions she has. His motto is to answer kids truthfully when they ask a question to him. On the other hand, though, his sister, Aunt Alexandra puts Scout down and is not supportive. She calls her mean names and makes it known that she doesn’t like her ways. Their relationships with Scout are quite different from each other because not only because it’s her father and aunt. As discussed before, Atticus is supportive to Scout, so their relationship is much stronger that Scout and “Auntie”. Aunt Alexandra, in addition to Francis is a person that Scout does not look forward to seeing every year. I presume that Scout would lose her mind if she had to put up with Alexandra’s criticism all year long, she would not be as happy. She would probably not think of it, but she is lucky she has such a good, kind father who thinks about his relationship with his children and constantly tries to strengthen it.

To Kill A Mockingbird Setting blog

This photograph shows rows of corn and other plants. There isn’t very much food on the plants, though. The soil looks very dry and rocky. There are no weeds around. It looks like someone made a lot of effort to keep it looking good. This picture was taken in a time when people spent many hours farming, making sure there were no weeds and that the crops would grow well. The picture may have been taken during the Great Depression because the farmers needed to work extra hard to make up the money and it seems like the people working on this farm work very hard. In the background there are houses made of wood. They aren’t painted or look fancy but they look well taken care of. Since the houses aren’t painted and seem fairly small, I would assume that the people who live there aren’t very wealthy. There are big trees around them but no people in sight. It looks like a farm. The sun is shining bright and lighting up the houses and plants.The garden seems well taken care of, even if the soil doesn’t look the best. The soil looks dried out, which might be the case if the are was very hot. This picture would be more of a Cunningham house than a Finch house because the Cunningham’s were farmers and were among the people who didn’t have very much money, not knowing when they would eat next. The Finchs, on the other hand were more wealthy, more of a middle class family, so they would not have lived at a place like this.


There are multiple reasons why this photograph might have been taken. The person who took this picture may have been trying to record how well their garden was doing that year. Or, maybe they were trying to see how their garden started out as so they could compare it to how their garden turned out in the end. To me it seems like they were focusing on the garden, but they may have been focusing on the houses. Maybe, they had just finished building the house and wanted to document the occasion. There is no way of knowing the photographer’s true motive, all we can do is guess. In this photograph, there is a still garden with wood houses in the background. There are no people or animals and nothing seems like it is planning on moving anytime soon. It seems like a warm day with the sun brightly shining.

In this photograph, I mostly wonder why there are no people in the picture. In this picture there are crops and houses and sun. It seems like the perfect place for a person to be. Someone should be in this picture either working or just enjoying the beautiful weather. In these times, people were out of their homes most of the day, which is why it is weird that no person is in sight. Scout said, “Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin’.” I find it interesting that if they are almost never inside, you see nobody outside in this sunny, beautiful picture. Another thing about this picture that I was curious about was why the people living in this area are growing vegetables. Are they growing them to eat themselves, or are they growing them to sell? They are most likely planning on selling the food they grow to make money. In Alabama, especially at the time of To Kill A Mockingbird, there were a lot of farmers who had to work extra hard to get through the Great Depression. “Farmers… the crash hit them the hardest.”, said Atticus. The crash is all the money they are losing and all the troubles they are going through. Since the farmers are affected the most and it is probably a harder life for them, they might be working hard, making sure the food grows well so it can be sold to give them money. If the people in this photo were poor, it would make sense that their house wouldn’t be painted and they wouldn’t have any unnecessary items around their house.