To Kill a Mockingbird works as a moral text by showing how we draw distinctions and distinguish ourselves in doing so. It is in the discernment of distinctions that we engage in moral discernment:

(i) When Dill challenges Jem to go up to the Radley Place he taunts him by saying, "You're sacred." Jem's reply: "'Ain't scared, just respectful,' Jem said." [18]

(ii) Jem, in working through his mental plan to get Boo Radley to come out says:

"Lemme think a minute . . . it's sort of like making a turtle come out . . ."
How's that?" asked Dill.
"Strike a match under him."
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.
"Ain't hateful, just persuades him--'s not like you'd chunk him in the fire," Jem growled.
"How do you know a match don't hurt him?"
"Turtles can't feel, stupid," said Jem.
"Were you ever a turtle, huh?"
"My stars, Dill! Now lemme think . . . reckon we can rock him . . . ." [18-19]

(iii) Look at the difference between the way Atticus and Miss Stephanie Crawford deal with the situation at the Radley house. Atticus takes the position that the children should mind their own business and refuses to provide information about what goes on inside the Radley house. Miss Stephanie on the other hand is a ready source of community gossip. ("Miss Stephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight through the window at her . . . said his head as like a skull lookin' at her.") [17]. We might, given Miss Stephanie stance, want to consider the role that gossip plays in our moral lives.

(iv) Consider the difference between Miss Caroline's and Atticus' approach to Scout's learning to read. Later, Scout comments on the differences she experiences in reading at home and at school: She says:

As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me. [37].

(v) Scout tries to understand the difference in various kinds of poverty: She ask Atticus, for example, whether they are poor. Atticus tells her: "We are indeed." [25]. Jem asks: "Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?" Atticus explains the difference: "The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash him them hardest." Professional people, like Atticus, are poor he tells them "because the farmers were poor." [25].

(vi) Scout, in trying to explain Walter Cunningham's poverty to Miss Caroline, gets into trouble because she doesn't have the ability to "explain things as well as Atticus. . . ." [18].

(vii) Calpurnia calls Scout to task for protesting too loudly about Walter Cunningham's generous use of molasses telling her Walter is company. Scout: "He ain't company, Cal, he's just a Cunningham--" [29]. Calpurnia rejects the distinction in no uncertain terms.

(viii) Note the difference between Little Chuck Little, "a born gentlemen" who befriends Miss Carolina, and Burris Ewell who comes only to the first day of class and gets into trouble even on the single day he is compelled to be at school. When Burris turns mean, Chuck Little puts a hand "to his pocket" and tells Burris: "Watch your step, Burris . . . I'd soon's kill you as look at you. Now go home." [32]

(ix) When Scout tries to talk Atticus into letting her drop out of school and uses Burris Ewell to support her case, Atticus explains how applying the truancy laws to her may be different than the way they apply (or perhaps we should say don't apply) to Burris Ewell. There is further, the matter of hunting and fishing laws which are not enforced when the Ewells kill game illegally in order to fed themselves. [18].

(x) Consider the scene in which Scout and Jem try to figure out what to do about the Indian Head pennies they had found in the tinfoil pouch in the knot hole of the tree:

Plucking an occasional camellia, getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson's cow on a summer day, helping ourselves to someone's scuppernongs was art of our ethical culture, but money was different. [39-40]

(xi) There is, in the world that Jem and Scout inhabit, a difference between boys and girls. Jem is furious at Scout for acting like a girl. "I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it's mortifyin." [42]. Scout has managed, in Jem's eyes, to avoid acting like he assumes girls act when they are being girls.

At one point Jem responds to Scout's protests about a night visit to the Radley Place telling her: "Scout, I'm tellin' you for the last time, shut your trap or go home--I declare to the Lord you're gettin' more like a girl every day!" [56]

(xii) When Jem gets caught without his pants after his night foray to the Radley house Dill tries to help Jem out with an inquiring father by inventing a story about playing strip poker to explain Jem's condition. When Atticus asks, "Were you all playing cards?" Jem has an answer: "No sir, just with matches." Scout comments on her brother's adroit distinction: "I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal." [59]

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