(1) The novel begins with a tracing of the family lineage that landed the Finches in southern Alabama. How does your family and your ancestors figure in the kind of lawyer you will be?

Harper Lee begins To Kill a Mockingbird with Scout's musing about her family, its origins, and how the Finch family by way of Simon Finch came to this country from Cornwall in England. Scout knows the lineage of her "Southern" family and its arrival in Alabama and how the Finchs came to be at Finch's Landing.

A family and a family name mean something in Maycomb. In contrast to the Finch family, we are told of another family, two men who were represented by Atticus and got themselves hanged when they wouldn't take Atticus's advice to plead guilty -- they were Haverfords, who had a name in Maycomb County "synonymous with jackass."

Later, when Scout describes the Radley Place and the origins of their childhood play around the mystery of Boo Radley, she mentions Boo Radley's involvement with "some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb. They did little, but enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sunday's and went to the picture show; they attended dances at the country's riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey." [14]

And there is, in the opening pages of the novel, an introduction to the Radley house. Scout's primary interest in her neighbors, the Radleys, lies primarily in Boo Radley, but what little she knew of the Radleys was of interest to her because they conducted themselves so differently from everyone else. "The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb's principal recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighbors assumed contained the family groceries." [13-14]

We are introduced to the Cunninghams when Scout tries to use some of her family-based information to help her first grade teacher, Miss Caroline, deal with her initiation into teaching.

Later, on the first day of school, there is an incident with Burris Ewell, who is found to have a "cootie" which distresses Miss Caroline to no end and when she instructs Burris to go home, wash his head with lye soap, and bathe himself before coming back to school, Burris announces he has just seen his last day in school. Miss Caroline asks what he means by "I done done my time for this year." [31]. When Burris doesn't answer, one of the students tells her, "He's one of the Ewells, ma'am. . . ." [31]

Later, as her teaching day becomes more perplexing, Miss Caroline seems to have second thoughts about knowing so resolutely how to proceed and more willing to learn from her young charges who the Ewells (as a family) are. [31]

(2) Both Atticus and his brother left home--Finch's Landing--to become professionals. Atticus "went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine." [8-9]. A sister, Alexandra, "remained at the Landing" [9]. Whether staying behind at Finch's Landing has shaped her character we do not know, but we will learn that she is a decidedly different kind of person than her brother Atticus.

(3) Atticus Finch is a Southern. How might this have a bearing on the kind of lawyer he turns out to be?

To Kill a Mockingbird lays out, not just the lineage of an established family, but a man and a lawyer who is committed to a "place." "When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb." [9]. On Atticus's relation to Maycomb and his life there, Scout says of Atticus: "He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him. . . ." [9]. This was a small town and Atticus was related, in one way or another, to "nearly every family in the town." [9]

(i) We might, using To Kill a Mockingbird, begin to talk about an ethics of place in contrast to the professional ethics we associate with an ethics of role.

(ii) What kind of town is Maycomb?

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweet talcum.

"People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stories around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outsider the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself." [9-10]

(4) To Kill a Mockingbird is not only a story about a family and a place and the various kinds of ethic(s) one finds in a small southern town, but about the boundaries that separate and distinguish the inhabitants of a place. Scout maps out these boundaries in the opening scene of the novel: "We lived on the main residential street in town--Atticus, Jem and I, plus Calpurnia our cook.") [10]. (Calpurnia has helped Atticus look after Scout and Jem, her brother, since their mother had died when Scout was two years old.) [10]

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose's house two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We were never tempted to break them. [10-11]

Within the boundaries of town/main street/"summertime calling distance of Calpurnia" there is much going on:

Atticus, their father: who Scout reports was "satisfactory" as a father, "he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment." [10]

Calpurnia: "She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember." [10]

The Radley Place--"three doors to the south" was "inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end." [11]

Mrs. Dubose's house, "two doors to the north": "Mrs. Dubose was plain hell." [11]. "[N]eighborhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old woman who ever lived. Jem wouldn't go by her place without Atticus beside him." [39]

Dill: who upon self-introduction to Scout and Jem, announces his name and "I can read." When asked, "so what?" he replies: "I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it. . . ." [11]. Jem tells Dill, that Scout's "been reading ever since she was born. . . ." [11]

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