Text Leveling System

To Kill A Mockingbird

RDQ:	3711	Max Word/Sent	63	Total Words	3481		Diff Words	1175
Lex	1120	Ave Word/.Sent	17	Hi Freq occurs	2391	68.7%	Hi freq	426	36.3%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	32.4	Low Freq occurs	421	12.1%	Low freq	340	28.9%

When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked the back of his hand was at right angles to his body his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less so long as he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all but Jem who was four years my senior said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing it
really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right. Being Southerners it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the bands of their more liberal brethren and]]
as Simon called himself a Methodist he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia thence to Jamaica thence to Mobile and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling Simon made a pile practicing medicine but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once to find a wife and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich.
It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead Finch's Landing and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice wheat flour and articles of clothing supplied by river-boats from Mobile.
Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century when my father Atticus Finch went to Montgomery to read law and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.
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 County. Atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack a spittoon a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape]]
 
 
with their lives but they were Haverfords in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law.
During his first five years in Maycomb Atticus practiced economy more than anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father and chose to study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people they knew him and because of Simon Finch's industry Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town.

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 sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square shuffled in and out of the stores 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 outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it]]
 
 
was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: May-comb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town-Atticus Jem and I plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us read to us and treated us with courteous detachment.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. 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.
Our mother died when I was two so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born and two years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that I knew better than to bother him.
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. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.
That was the summer Dill came to us.
Early one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the back yard Jem and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford's collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy-Miss Rachel's rat terrier]] 
was expecting-instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down he wasn't much higher than the collards.
We stared at him until he spoke:
"Hey."
"Hey yourself" said Jem pleasantly.
"I'm Charles Baker Harris" he said. "I can read."
"So what?" I said.
"I just thought you'd like to know I can read You got anything needs readin' I can do it. . . ."
"How old are you" asked Jem "four-and-a-half '?"
"Goin' on seven."
"Shoot no wonder then" said Jem jerking his thumb at me. "Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born and she ain't even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin' on seven."
"I'm little but I'm old" he said.
Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. "Why don't you come over Charles Baker Harris?" he said. "Lord what a name."
's not any funnier'n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name's Jeremy Atticus Finch."
Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to fit mine" he said. "Your name's longer'n you are. Bet it's a foot longer."
"Folks call me Dill" said Dill struggling under the fence.
"Do better if you go over it instead of under it" I said. "Where'd you come from?"
Dill was from Meridian Mississippi was spending the summer with his aunt Miss Rachel and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill who went to the picture show twenty times on it.
"Don't have any picture shows here except Jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes" said Jem. "Ever see anything good?" 
Dill had seen Dracula a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. "Tell it to us" he said.
Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duck fluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over]]
him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would tighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead.
When Dill reduced Dracula to dust and Jem said the show sounded better than the book I asked Dill where his father was: "You ain't said anything about him."
"I haven't got one." "Is he dead?" "No..."
"Then if he's not dead you've got one haven't you?" Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush a sure sign that Dill had been studied and found acceptable. Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment. Routine contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard fussing running through our list of dramas based on the works of Oliver Optic Victor Appleton and Edgar Rice Burroughs. In this matter we were lucky to have Dill. He played the character parts formerly thrust upon me-the ape in Tarzan Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys Mr. Damon in Tom Swift. Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin whose head teemed with eccentric plans strange longings and quaint fancies.
But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner a safe distance from the Radley gate. There he would stand his arm around the fat pole staring and wondering.
The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard-a "swept" yard that was never swept-where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.
Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said
lie. existed but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down and peeped in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap it was because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people's chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie who eventually drowned himself in Barker's Eddy people still looked at the Radley Place unwilling to discard their initial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chicken yard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked.
The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were born. 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 neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knew how old Mr. Radley made his living-Jem said he "bought cotton" a polite term for doing nothing but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long as anybody could remember.
The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays another thing alien to Maycomb's ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets men wore coats children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps and call "He-y" of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes but before I was born.
According to neighborhood legend when the younger Radley boy was in his teens he became acquainted 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 Sundays and went to the picture show; they attended dances at the county's riverside gambling hell the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boy was in with the wrong crowd.
One night in an excessive spurt of high spirits the boys backed around the square in a borrowed flivver resisted arrest by Maycomb's ancient beadle Mr. Conner and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. The town decided something had to be done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was and he was bound and determined they wouldn't get away with it so the boys came before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct disturbing the peace assault and battery and using abusive and profane language in the presence and hearing of a female. The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge; Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard them. The judge decided to send the boys to the state industrial school where boys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was. If the judge released Arthur Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley's word was his bond the judge was glad to do so.
The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondary education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through engineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays and Mr. Radley's boy was not seen again for fifteen years.
But there came a day barely within Jem's memory when Boo Radley was heard from and was seen by several people but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked much about the
Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus's only answer was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs they had a right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said "Mm mm mm."
So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford a neighborhood scold who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss Stephanie Boo was sitting in the living room cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by Boo drove the scissors into his parent's leg pulled them out wiped them on his pants and resumed his activities.
Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the living room cutting up the Tribune. He was thirty-three years old then.
Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boo wasn't crazy he was high-strung at times. It was all right to shut him up Mr. Radley conceded but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal. The sheriff hadn't the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes so Boo was locked in the courthouse basement.
(loo's transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem's memory. Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told Mr. Radley that if he didn't take Boo back Boo would die of mold from the damp. Besides Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the county.
Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no it wasn't that sort of thing that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.
My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door walk to the edge of the porch and pour water on her cannas. But every day Jem and I would see Mr. Radley walking to and from town. He was a thin leathery man with colorless eyes so colorless they did not reflect light. I his cheekbones were sharp and his mouth was wide with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. Miss Stephanie Crawford
said he was so upright he took the word of God as his only law and we believed her because Mr. Radley's posture was ramrod straight.

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Author's purpose: Implied

Sequence of Events: Chronological

Mature Concepts: With some uncommon experiences

Features

Character traits

Character development

Integral Setting - Cultural/Regional

Complex plot

Dialect/Accents

Topic

*Family & Friends

*Feelings, Behaviors

*Schools & Education

Prejudice

School

Low Frequency Words

absence	abundance	abusive	acceptable	according
acquainted	activities	adjoined	alien	alleged
alongside	ambled	ancestors	angles	apothecary
apparel	appleton	arising	articles	assault
assuaged	assumed	asylum	atticus	atticus's
auburn	azaleas	beadle	bitch	borrowed
boundaries	bounty	breathed	brethren	cannas
chained	charged	chattels	cheekbones	clients
collard	collards	comb	committed	comparison
conceded	consulted	contentment	corsets	council
countless	county's	courteous	courthouse	cowlick
culprit	curiosity	curve	cussed	customary
damon	decent	departure	derived	descendants
detachment	detention	determined	dictum	discard
disgrace	disorderly	dispatched	distaste	disturbance
disturbing	domiciled	dracula	dramas	drowned
drunkenly	dubose	dubose's	earnings	eaves
eccentric	economy	eddy	education	employed
engineering	entity	epic	eventually	ewells
exceeded	excessive	explanations	fancies	fascinated
finch	finch's	flivver	formal	formerly
funnier'n	further	fury	gambling	general
generosity	glory	goin	graham	groceries
guarded	guilty	habitually	hale	hammock
hanged	hastings	haverford's	haverfords	healed
hell	homestead	household	illness	impotent
impressive	improving	imprudent	income	industry
initial	injury	intimidation	invested	irritated
jackass	jamaica	jem	jem's	jeremy
jerking	judge	junior	jutted	knowing
ladies	lafayette	language	leathery	legend
legislature	lest	liberal	linen	longer'n
longings	loo's	maintain	malevolent	marriage
maycomb	maycomb's	medicine	mere	methodist
methodists	mindful	misery	missionary	mississippi
misunderstanding	mobile	modest	montgomery	morbid
murder	mutilated	nearsighted	nebulous	negroes
neighborhood	neighbors	nevertheless	nightfall	nocturnal
northern	nowhere	occasion	occasionally	opposite
optimism	originally	outhouse	paddled	parallel
peace	pecan	pecans	persecution	persisted
phantom	philadelphia	photographer	picket	piety
pleading	pleasantly	possession	posture	pour
practiced	practicing	predilection	presence	prison
probate	product	profane	profound	promptly
publicly	pulpits	punt	puny	pursuit
quaint	radley	radley's	radleys	ramrod
readin	reasonable	recently	recorded	recreation
reflect	regarded	related	repertoire	reproductions
required	residential	resisted	respect	resumed
revelation	riverside	rotted	routine	rover
sagged	saint	sarum	satisfactory	schoolyard
scissors	scowled	scrapbook	season	secondary
seldom	senior	series	sheriff	shingles
shuffled	shutters	sided	sidewalks	slat
slate	somewhat	source	southerners	spending
spite	spittoon	spurt	squinted	stealthy
stinginess	strictures	stripped	studied	stumphole
sufficient	supplied	suspicions	sustain	sweat
sweltering	swept	synonymous	taciturn	talcum
tarzan	teacakes	teemed	tempted	terrier
terrorized	thence	thereafter	thrust	tobacco
towered	tradition	transition	tribune	tuscaloosa
twentieth	tyrannical	unbroken	unforgivable	unknown
unsullied	unwilling	upright	urged	vague
vapid	veranda	victor	warned	warnings
wesley's	where'd	whiskey	wilted	witnesses
worshiped	worth	wrongful	yonder's	younger