To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. What is Scout's role in the Halloween pageant?

   • Correct answer: A ham
   • A pumpkin
   • A cornstalk
   • A turkey

   Scout is cast as a ham in Mrs. Merriweather's agricultural pageant celebrating Maycomb County's products. Her costume is made of chicken wire and brown cloth.

   Read the passage
2. 2

   Question 2. Why do Jem and Scout walk home alone in the dark?

   • Atticus told them to come straight home before the rain began
   • The pageant ran so late that the last cars had already gone
   • Correct answer: Scout missed her cue and was too embarrassed to leave with the crowd
   • Jem wanted to catch Cecil Jacobs and pay him back for the scare

   Scout fell asleep backstage, missed her cue, and entered only when Mrs. Merriweather mounted the stage with the flag. Mortified, she would not go through the crowd, so Jem waited backstage with her until the audience left, putting them on the path alone.

   Read the passage
3. 3

   Question 3. Who scares Jem and Scout on the way TO the pageant?

   • Walter Cunningham
   • Bob Ewell
   • Boo Radley
   • Correct answer: Cecil Jacobs

   Cecil Jacobs jumps out and scares them on the way to school. This prank foreshadows the real danger they will face on the walk home.

   Read the passage
4. 4

   Question 4. What does Jem say is making the sounds behind them on the walk home?

   • Scout's costume rustling with every step
   • Correct answer: Cecil Jacobs trying to scare them again
   • The wind blowing through the big oak
   • An old dog trailing them through the yard

   Jem rejects Scout's guess of an old dog, and Scout soon realizes the sound is not her costume. Jem then says "It's just old Cecil" — though Scout soon wonders how long he will try to keep the Cecil myth going.

   Read the passage
5. 5

   Question 5. Who attacks Jem and Scout on the walk home?

   • Nathan Radley
   • Correct answer: Bob Ewell
   • Mr. Cunningham
   • A stranger passing through Maycomb

   Bob Ewell attacks the children near the oak tree by the Radley lot, seeking revenge against Atticus for humiliating him during the Tom Robinson trial.

   Read the passage
6. 6

   Question 6. What injury does Jem sustain during the attack?

   • Correct answer: A badly broken arm at the elbow
   • Several cracked ribs on his left side
   • A broken leg below the knee
   • A deep knife wound across his shoulder

   Jem's arm is badly broken at the elbow, fulfilling the foreshadowing from the novel's very first sentence.

   Read the passage
7. 7

   Question 7. How does Scout's ham costume affect her when the attack begins?

   • It makes her too heavy for the man to carry off
   • It hides her from the attacker in the darkness
   • Correct answer: It pins her arms so she cannot keep her balance
   • It cushions her body when she falls to the ground

   When Jem yells for her to run, Scout takes one giant step and reels: with her arms useless inside the chicken wire, she cannot keep her balance, and she has to roll and flounder to escape her "wire prison."

   Read the passage
8. 8

   Question 8. What sense does Scout rely on most during the attack?

   • Taste
   • Sight
   • Smell
   • Correct answer: Sound and touch

   Trapped inside her costume on a night with no moon, Scout can barely see. She experiences the attack through sounds (shuffling feet, scuffling, Jem's scream) and touch (sinking into the man's stomach, feeling along the ground with her toes).

   Read the passage
9. 9

   Question 9. Who carries Jem home after the attack?

   • Mr. Heck Tate, the county sheriff
   • Correct answer: A man Scout does not recognize
   • Dr. Reynolds, the family doctor
   • Atticus, who runs to the schoolyard

   Under the street light Scout sees a man carrying Jem around the corner and across the yard, where Atticus helps him take Jem inside. She takes him for some countryman she does not know who must have heard their screams.

   Read the passage
10. 10

    Question 10. What does Heck Tate find under the oak tree?

    • A threatening note signed by Bob Ewell
    • Cecil Jacobs's flashlight, dropped beside the big oak tree
    • Scout's shoes, left behind after the pageant
    • Correct answer: Bob Ewell's body with a knife stuck under his ribs

    Sheriff Heck Tate reports that Bob Ewell is lying dead on the ground under the tree with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs.

    Read the passage
11. 11

    Question 11. Where is the man who brought Jem home when Scout goes into Jem's room?

    • In the doorway with his hat in his hand
    • In a rocking-chair by the fireplace
    • Correct answer: In a corner, leaning against the wall
    • Beside Jem's bed, next to Atticus

    The man who brought Jem in stands in a corner of Jem's room, leaning against the wall. Scout does not know him and supposes he is a countryman who had been at the pageant.

    Read the passage
12. 12

    Question 12. Why is Chapter 28 considered the climax of the novel?

    • Correct answer: It ends in the attack under the oak that leaves Jem hurt and Bob Ewell dead
    • It shows Scout finally performing her part in the pageant on cue
    • It reveals at last the jury's verdict in the Tom Robinson trial
    • It ends the novel with Scout and Jem safely at home again

    The chapter fulfills the opening sentence's foreshadowing of Jem's broken arm, and the danger that has been building ends in an attack under the big oak that leaves Jem badly hurt and Bob Ewell dead.

    Read the passage
13. 13

    Question 13. What is ironic about Scout's ham costume?

    • Correct answer: Its shiny paint, meant for the footlights, let others see her in the dark
    • It was so hot and tight that she refused to wear it on the stage
    • It won the twenty-five cent prize for best costume despite her late entrance
    • Its brown cloth, meant to look like a ham, hid her completely from Cecil

    Mrs. Crenshaw painted the fat streaks with shiny stuff "so they'd show up under the footlights." On the dark walk home, Jem says that same paint lets him — and whoever is following — see Scout.

    Read the passage