Wednesday 19 April 2017

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, what is the date that Miss Maudie's house burned down?

While we are never told the exact date Miss Maudie's house burned down in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, we can deduce an approximate date based on other information in the book.

One thing we know is that Miss Maudie's house burned down the night it had snowed during the day in Maycomb, which happened soon after Tom Robinson's arrest. We know based on Sheriff Tate's testimony during the trial that Robinson was arrested on "November twenty-first" (Ch. 17). Though no year is directly stated, we know the novel is set during the Great Depression in the mid-1930s because we know Franklin D. Roosevelt is president and his New Deal proposals are underway, such as his creation of the Works Progress Administation (WPA), which was signed into effect in 1933 and put into action in 1935. The WPA is mentioned as early as the second chapter of the book.

In addition, we know that the weather turned very cold for two weeks just before it snowed.

We also know that three weeks passed between the day it snowed and Christmas time. We learn the length of time based on Scout's proclamation that, after the snow day, she remembered her father's command to refrain from getting into fights for three weeks until Christmas time:


I felt extremely noble for having remembered, and remained noble for three weeks. Then Christmas came and disaster struck. (Ch. 9)



December 4th is the day that falls exactly three weeks just before Christmas Day. December 4th is also nearly two weeks before November 21st, Tom Robinson's arrest. Therefore, we can conclude that it snowed on December 4th in the mid-1930s, probably 1935, and Miss Maudie's house caught fire that exact same night.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Is there any personification in "The Tell-Tale Heart"?

Personification is a literary device in which the author attributes human characteristics and features to inanimate objects, ideas, or anima...