Wednesday, November 19, 2014

How do I write a monologue on Boo Radley from To Kill A Mockingbird?I have to write a 2-3 minute monologue on Boo Radley in which he voices...

While the greatest temptation may be to choose Boo
Radley's heroic act of saving Jem and Scout from the murderous Bob Ewell at the novel's
end, a monologue on another action of Boo's could, perhaps, be more originally
written.


Take, for example, the episode in Chapter 5
in which the children try to communicate with Boo by sending him a note, but Atticus
returns home for a file and catches them. So, then, in Chapter 6, Dill and Jem decide
that they will just peek into a window at night when Atticus is engrossed in a book. 
The children decide to go under the wire fence. Once near a window Jem and Scout make a
saddle of their hands and lift Dill to the window; nothing can be seen inside. Next, Jim
steps on the porch board that makes a creaking sound, but he reaches a window and looks
in.  However, there is a shadow that walks across Jem. Seeing this, the children flee in
terror, but Jem catches his pants on the fence, and he must climb out of them to get
free.  Later, his father comes out when he hears a shotgun fire, but when Atticus
notices that Jem has no pants, Dill lies about Jem's losing his pants to him.  Worried
late at night that Atticus will catch him in his lie, Jem feels compelled to return for
his pants.  Surprisingly, they have been stitched for
him.


Now, to create a monologue about this incident from
the perspective of Boo Radley, one must do as Scout learns; that is, one must climb into
Boo's skin and "walk around in it."  By changing the point of view as Boo, one can
describe what has happened that night in a much different manner.  For instance, Boo
could express the fact that he has been forbidden to go outside in years; however, he
has watched the children and hated to hear them speak of him as a "haint." Seeing Dill
peek into the window, Boo has wanted to wave or tap the glass, but he is unable because
Mr. Radley has been alerted.  When Mr. Radley steps outside, Boo feels several
emotions:  fear, curiosity, loneliness.  Frustrated that the children are so close, but
still think he is a freak, Boo makes the effort to show his kind feelings toward them by
sewing Jem's pants.


This episode from an early chapter
affords the voice of Boo Radley to express his longings that have been surpressed for so
long.  That the children came with a note the day before shows Boo they are more than
afraid of him; he realizes that they wish to commununicate. And, he does, too. This is
why he has mended Jem's pants.  Boo wishes to tell the children he
likes them.


A monologue can be poetic, so perhaps one could
employ the different images of the children that Boo has obtained as he watches silently
from inside his melancholy house.  Why, he may have almost laughed aloud as he has
watched the children!  And, the night when they thought they were sneaking up to his
house, was so funny as they snuck up as if they were soldiers. Yet, he wanted so to talk
with them.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...