To Kill a Mockingbird Foreshadowing Quotes

The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. There is an ominous feel about the Radley house, with the small flicker of movement suggesting someone is watching from inside. The children are fascinated with Boo who never comes out of the house, but he is interested in them also. The scene foreshadows Boo’s entrance into the children’s lives.

Two live oaks stood at the end of the Radley lot; their roots reached into the side-road and made it bumpy. Something about one of the trees attracted my attention.
Some tinfoil was sticking out of a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in the afternoon sun. I stood on my tiptoe, hastily looked around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappers.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 4. The Radley tree symbolizes community. The roots are reaching out and symbolize how the reclusive Boo is trying to reach out and be friendly towards the children. He tries to connect with Jem and Scout by leaving gifts for then in the tree. Boo’s gifts foreshadow how he will later be seen as a symbol of goodness and courage and not the frightening, reclusive monster he is depicted to be early on in the story.

We ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box patchworked with bits of tinfoil collected from chewing-gum wrappers. It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch. Jem flicked open the tiny catch. Inside were two scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 4. Despite the nasty gossip about him, Boo Radley is a kind and gentle person. He leaves the children gifts. The care with which he constructs the box shows how much he cares for Jem and Scout. This foreshadows his emergence in the minds of people later on as a kind, loving person as opposed to the scary monster that he is depicted as in the early part of the story.

“See there?” Jem was scowling triumphantly. “Nothin’ to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it’s mortifyin’.”
There was more to it than he knew, but I decided not to tell him.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 4. Jem attacks Scout’s gender and insults her about acting like a girl whenever he feels she challenges his manhood. In this instance the tire he was pushing her in rolls into Radley’s yard and she makes him retrieve it. What she didn’t tell him was that she heard laughter coming from the Radley home. Boo is obviously inside watching them play, this foreshadows the important role he will have in the children’s lives.

Through all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 4. Scout lands at the bottom of the Radley’s front steps when a tire she is inside rolls into their yard. She hears laughter coming from the house. It can only have been Boo Radley. He is watching the children, this signals how he will later make an critical intervention in their lives.

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 10. Atticus Finch’s instruction, when he gives the childen air rifles for Christmas, foreshadowing the shooting of symbolic mockingbird Tom Robinson. The mockingbird, which sings beautiful music for the benefit of others and never does harm to anyone, is a symbol of innocence. So the rifles come with the condition attached: they are never to kill a mockingbird.

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 10. Miss Maudie says this to Scout after Atticus shoots a rabid dog and Scout and Jem are shocked to learn their father is the best shot in town but they never knew. Miss Maudie’s remarks are in response to Scout saying that Atticus should be proud. Atticus is a modest and humble man. The shooting of the mad dog could be seen as foreshadowing that Tom Robinson could meet the same fate.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11. Atticus to Jem after the death of Mrs. Dubose, whom Jem had been reading aloud to for the previous month. Atticus is a good father who wants to teach his children about courage. Mrs. Dubose was addicted to painkillers but was determined to overcome her addiction before dying and Atticus made Jem read to her to distract her from her pain. This also foreshadows that Atticus will take on the Tom Robinson case, knowing he has little chance of winning and angering many townspeople.

What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor’s voice came from far away, and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer’s child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.
A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 21. Scout describes the return of the Tom Robinson trial jury from their deliberations and the voice of Judge Taylor like as if she was in a trance-type state. She knows it will be a guilty verdict, especially when none of the jurors look at Tom Robinson.

So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears. Atticus said he didn’t see how anything else could happen, that things had a way of settling down, and after enough time had passed people would forget that Tom Robinson’s existence was ever brought to their attention.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 26. Scout feels older and wiser after the Tom Robinson trial and the discrimination he faced, and is remorseful about the way she treated Boo Radley. The quote also foreshadows Boo Radley’s eventual reappearance and the night Scout and Jem are attacked by Bob Ewell.

It is a scary place though, ain’t it?” I said. “Boo doesn’t mean anybody any harm, but I’m right glad you’re along.”
…”Ain’t you scared of haints?”
We laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our years as mist with sunrise.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. The playful discussion by Scout and Jem about childhood fears foreshadows some not-so-childish, real-life, scary things about to happen. The children are about to be attacked and Bob Ewell’s body is about to be found. Also foreshadowed is Boo Radley’s transformation from the fearful ghostly figure of the children’s imagination to a real person that they respect.

High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his repertoire in blissful unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging from the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower bird to the irascible qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will, Poor Will.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 28. The mocker is a mockingbird, standing for innocence and defenseless beings. The bluejay represents malevolent creatures that harm others. Boo Radley is a symbolic mockingbird and Bob Ewell a bluejay. The closeness of both birds in the same tree foreshadows Ewell’s attack on the children and Boo defending them.
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