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How do the children plan to spend Dill's last night in Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird?
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On Dill's last night in Maycomb, he, Jem, and Scout plan to spy on Boo Radley by peeking into the Radley house. They choose this night because it is dark, allowing them to avoid detection, and if Boo Radley harmed them, they would miss school instead of vacation. During their adventure, they encounter a shadow, prompting them to flee. Jem loses his pants on a fence, which are later mysteriously mended, hinting at Boo's unseen kindness.
The night before Dill goes back home, he and Jem decide to go on one last adventure. Jem hesitantly lets Scout join them. They deccide to spy on the Radley house. They want to spy on Boo Radley through the window, in hopes of catching a glimpse of this legendary figure. They enter through the creaking gate to the cottage, terrified they will be discovered. They quietly sneak around to the back of the house. Jem quietly creeps to the window and lifts himself up. It is then that Scout spots a shadow. At first, she thinks it is a tree. Then she sees it move:
The shadow stopped about a foot beyond Jem. Its arm came out from its side, dropped, and was still. Then it turned and moved back across Jem, walked along the porch and off the side of the house, returning as it had come (Chapter...
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6).
The children become aware of the human shadow and bolt from the yard. They escape under the barbed wire fence. Jem's pants catch on the barbed wire, so he leaves them behind. The shadow, who is Mr. Nathan Radley, fires a shot into the air.
The only child that leaves Maycomb is Dill at the end of the summers. Jem and Scout go to Finch's Landing for Christmas, but that's still in Maycomb county. Dill, on the other hand, lives in Meridian during the school year and stays with his Aunt Rachel during the summers. There's only one passage that references a "last night in Maycomb," and again, it references Dill leaving for the school year, as follows:
"'Yes,' said our father, when Jem asked him if we could go over and sit by Miss Rachel's fishpool with Dill, as this was his last night in Maycomb" (50).
With that said, Jem and Dill plan to go sneaking around the Radley house to peek into a window on this night. When Scout catches wind of it, she asks them why they waited till this last night of summer vacation to do something like this. The answer is as follows:
"Because nobody could see them at night, because Atticus would be so deep in a book he wouldn't hear the Kingdom coming, because if Boo Radley killed them they'd miss school instead of vacation, and because it was easier to see inside a dark house in the dark than in the daytime" (51).
These are all clever reasons to wait until the last night of summer vacation to go snooping around the neighborhood's haunted house. (The best reason is if they get killed then they wouldn't miss any of vacation!) Little did they know that they would get shot at and Jem would lose his pants on the fence in the process. And little did they know that when Jem went back in the middle of the night for his pants that they would be crudely mended by a "friendly ghost." It's interesting because it seems as if each time the children try to make contact with Boo Radley, something ironic (unexpected) seems to happen.