Connector Chapters 1-5

As my tenth grade English class is reading To Kill a Mocking Bird. We are just starting into the book and just finished up with our first five chapters. We were just introduced to the characters Atticus, Calpurnia, Jem, Scout, and the good friend of Scout and Jem, Dill Harris.

I personally made several connections with the book. Between me and my town there are a gratuitous amount of similarities. The biggest connections that I made was that they live in a small town where a lot of the townspeople seems to know each other and share things. I see this all the time in our little town of Kalispell. I also can personally connect with Scout’s problems with teachers and other students not knowing about a certain idea or way to deal with problems or things like that. I also have had disagreements and problems myself with teachers. As well as this I see that I have several similar type people in my life like Scout. I have a brother that I used to play with all the time. In addition to this I have friends who I hangout with in the summer and it’s always a down point when school comes back around and I can’t spend my days playing and hanging out with people. This story has most of the regular components of a story, characters and that kind of thing. I think that the book is the closest book to Tom Sawyer. One connection that I think that others won't make about this chunk of the book is that I used to go past a house that was similar to the Radley house. My friends and I would play around and go around the house and things.

The discussion that the group had was all about how they saw things in their lives that directly related to them and the book. They also talked about literary devices and how the way that the two pieces of gum and the two pennies in the tree could be symbolism. They talked about how the setting and the characters could have an impact later on.

What I noticed in this book is that the kids are educated and that Scout has a lot of problems at school because of her higher level of reading and education. The teacher refuses to acknowledge that Scout is having difficulty fitting in because she is at a higher level of intelligence than the other kids. I saw this happening in school with myself. Though it didn't happen to me in the first grade I hit a point in seventh grade at which I had a better understanding of the material in several classes. This caused problems with my teachers because I didn't do the work because I already understood what was going on. Scout has the same problems and though it comes at a different point in time I understand where the other came from on this.