What allusions are used in chapter 5 of To Kill A Mockingbird?

An allusion is an indirect reference to a person, an event, a thing, or a literary work. The reference is intended to create a new association for the reader. There are two notable allusions in chapter 5 of To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout makes one of them in reference to the gardening practices of their neighbor, Maudie Buford. She compares Miss Maudie’s vigorous attacks on nut-grass, a type of weed, to a famous battle from World War I. In addition, in describing Dill’s tendency to exaggerate or even lie, Scout says he claims descent from “Brigadier General Joe Wheeler.” This general served in the Confederate army and later was a US representative from Alabama.

The Second Battle of the Marne, which was fought between the Germans and Allies in 1918, is an appropriate comparison for Miss Maudie’s campaign. Although the Germans launched an offensive on the Western Front, the Allies not only held them off but launched a massive counterattack. The strength of the combined French and American forces compelled the Germans to retreat. From that point on, the Allies took the offensive, and the war ended three months later. Scout implies that Miss Maudie will be victorious over the weed.

Among the “biggest ones” that Dill tells to make himself seem more important are his claims of having flown seventeen times in an airplane and that his grandfather was the famous general Wheeler: “his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.” General Wheeler led Confederate forces in many Civil War battles, which would have given him a heroic reputation for Southerners of the time. His name would also be familiar to Alabama children from almost twenty years of service as a congressman.

What are examples of allusion and imagery in To Kill a Mockingbird?

There are several examples of imagery and allusions in To Kill a Mockingbird. You could list something from every chapter in the book. Allusions are meant to give an expression to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly, an indirect or passing reference to something. 

The first use of imagery, is the description of the Radley house. This is probably one of the most vivid uses in the story. "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 grey 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." Just by this imagery, you can picture what the Radley place looked liked. The descriptions of the house and yard, tells you who the house once was, but has now become. This is just one example of imagery in the story. 

Allusions are throughout the entire story. Here are just a couple: The disturbance between the north and south, here is talking about The Civil War. Dracula, in 1931, this was one of the most popular and famous stories on Dracula. Meridian, Mississippi, just a quick mention of the town. No money to buy it with, talking about the Great Depression. Scout is setting up how most of the town is still dealing with the effects of the Great Depression. Egyptians walked this way, here Jem is saying that Egyptians walk a certain way, based on pictures he had seen. Mockingbird, this is probably one of the best allusions in the book, the mockingbird is a bird found in North American, and known only for its vocal imitations. 

As you can see, the book is full of imagery and allusions. Harper Lee had a wonderful way with words. She describes things that make you feel like you are there. She cleverly sets up your suspense and imagination from the very beginning.

What are examples of allusion and imagery in To Kill a Mockingbird?

• 
  In Chapter 2, Miss Caroline introduces herself as being from Winston County, a county from the far northern part of Alabama (Maycomb is a fictional name for Lee hometown of Monroeville, in the southern part of the state). Not only is Miss Caroline not from the area, she is from the one county that did not join the Confederacy in the Civil War, a fact that "every child in Maycomb County knew..."
• Since the time setting of the novel is the 1930s, some of the programs of the New Deal, begun by President F.D. Roosevelt, are mentioned; for instance the W.P.A., or Works Progress Administration, such as the construction of buildings and roads by unemployed men. 
• Relief checks - This was government money provided to needy families; nowadays these checks are called "welfare checks."
• Also in Chapter 2, Jem explains to Scout that her new teacher uses the Dewey system, but he mistakes the Dewey Decimal System, a system of library classification used since 1876 when created by Melvin Dewey. Jem mistakes Melvin Dewey with John Dewey a psychologist, philosopher, and reformer of education, whose progressive theories influenced learning. He is the father of experiential education, the idea that people learn from experience.
• Robert E. Lee Ewell - The reprobate Bob Ewell is ironically named after the Confederate general whom history records as a man who "remains one of the most revered, iconic figures of American military leadership." This makes his character even more of a parody than he demonstrates himself in the courtroom.
• The Emmett Till Case - The trial of Tom Robinson is loosely based upon the 1941 beating and hanging of Emmett Till, an African-American teen in Mississippi charged with flirting with a white woman. Till's death and open-casket funeral exposed the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy in that time.
• Adolf Hitler and the Nazis - In her class Miss Gates speaks of the atrocities of the Nazis in their treatment of Jews; an incident used to point to her hypocrisy as she expresses racial bias later on.

Imagery

In Chapter 1, the description of the Radley home contains vivid sensory images:

"The Radley place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house.... The house... was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-grey 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.

At first we saw nothing but a kudzu-covered front porch, but a closer inspection revealed an arc of water defending from the leaves and splashing in the yellow circle of the street light, some ten feet from source to earth....

Another description with imagery is that of Scout's images of Atticus in Chapter 16:

... the memory of Atticus calmly folding his newspaper and pushing back his hat became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. 

What are examples of parallelism in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Parallelism is a literary device in which components of a sentence are grammatically the same, or similar in construction, sound, or meaning. Parallelism is an excellent persuasive tool that emphasizes and focuses on a subject, message, or theme through repetition. Parallelism also provides flow, rhythm, and symmetry to a sentence, which makes it memorable to the reader. Harper Lee employs parallelism at various points throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In chapter 20, Atticus employs parallelism during his closing remarks by saying,

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president.

Atticus's repeated use of the word "equal" followed by a revered individual emphasizes the importance for the jury to perceive and judge Tom Robinson equally by looking past their prejudice during deliberation.

In chapter 25, Scout employs parallelism while describing Maycomb's reaction to the news of Tom's Robinson's unfortunate death by saying,

To Maycomb, Tom’s death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.

The repetitive term "typical of a nigger" emphasizes Maycomb's overtly racist society and highlights the citizens' ugly prejudice. The word "typical" is used in a cavalier tone, which gives the audience a deeper insight into the prejudiced point of view of Maycomb's racist population.

What are examples of parallelism in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Parallelism is a literary device in which a writer or speaker creates sentences made up of parts that are grammatically the same or at least similar in terms of "construction, sound, meaning or meter" (Literary Devices, "Parallelism"). Parallelism is especially created through repetition. The Literary Devices dictionary gives us the example, "Alice ran into the room, into the garden, and into our hearts." Here, the repetition of prepositional phrases beginning with "into" creates parallel structure. In To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee frequently uses parallelism to establish tone and develop themes

One example of parallelism can be found in the first chapter. In her narration, Scout describes Maycomb and its society during the Great Depression. One thing she notes is that days seemed to be longer because "people moved slowly" as they "ambled across the square." She particularly uses parallelism in the following description:

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.

Here, beginning multiple phrases with a negative, such as "no," "nowhere," and "nothing," creates repetition, thereby also creating parallelism. Through the parallelism, Scout depicts the financial distress the town is in while also depicting the generally relaxed attitude of the town's citizens. The townspeople are not in a panicked frenzy as one might expect them to be during such a devastating time period; instead, they feel relaxed and a sense of optimism that helps set the tone of the rest of the novel.

A second example of parallelism can be found in Chapter 23, soon after the trial. Aunt Alexandra offends Scout by denying her permission to play with Walter Cunningham and calling him "trash." In an effort to appease Scout, Jem tries to explain their aunt's point of view by explaining what he has come to understand about the different types of people in the world:

I've thought about it a lot lately and I've got it all figured out. There's four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes. (Ch. 23)

Here, in each clause of the sentence, Jem's repetition of the contraction "there's" plus his repetition of the phrase "kind like" creates parallelism. Though Scout disagrees with his conclusions, his analysis of different people underscores a major theme in the book--differences in education levels creates differences in people that leads to prejudiced hatred.

As different published editions of the book will have different page numbers, only approximations can be given. The above passages are found in approximately the middle of the very first chapter and on approximately the second-to-last page of Chapter 23.

What are examples of metonymy or synecdoche in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Metonymy is a figure of speech that uses a term to replace the name of something else that closely embodies the same qualities. Writers use this kind of figure of speech to help readers grasp meaning.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, one of Harper Lee’s primary themes is the prejudice that people engage in, especially with certain hot-button issues, like race. The reader sees this in the reactions of the people of Maycomb toward Atticus Finch as he defends the black Tom Robinson who is accused of raping a white woman. This was (and sometimes still is) a deadly problem in the South.

At one point in the story, a gang of white men from Maycomb (led by Mr. Cunningham) attempt to storm the Maycomb County jail, presumably to lynch Robinsion. Atticus, who is guarding the jail (unarmed), has a hard time holding off the men until his kids show up and Scout, in her innocence and persistence, shames the men into leaving. The next day, as Atticus discusses the event with Scout, he says of Cunningham:

Mr. Cunningham’s basically a good man . . . he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.

Here the term “blind spot” is an instance of metonymy. Atticus does not really mean that Cunningham is physically blind. He means he is unable to comprehend the inappropriateness of his actions—he just cannot understand how wrong he is until Scout starts talking, which makes him realize what a good man Atticus is. Blindness is often associated with prejudice and hatred--the inability to mentally see the value of others who may be different from us. 

What are examples of metonymy or synecdoche in To Kill a Mockingbird?

According to the dictionary, "Synecdoche can be a defined as a figurative representation in which the part of an object is used as a linguistic placeholder for the whole object (part represents whole)."  An example of this in "To Kill A Mockingbird" can be found in chapter 20 when Atticus is giving his summation at the end of the trial.  Atticus stands up and addresses the "court."  He turns to the judge and says "With the court's permission."  This is an example of using a part to represent the whole.  The court is including all of the people, the jury, and the judge.  Even though he does not name all of these people we know when he is speaking to the "court," he is speaking to all of the people in the room and especially to the men on the jury and the judge.

The dictionary states that a "metonymy occurs as a linguistic device when an object represents a concept."  An example is when Miss Maudie asks Jem to "give her a hand," what she is really asking for is his help.