Scout compares the atmosphere within the courtroom to the impression she once felt the winter before.
One February morning, for whatever reason, Scout experienced an ominous silence outdoors:
...the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight[ly] as the door of the Radley house. A deserted, waiting, empty street....
Now, the courtroom has this same feeling of a...
Scout compares the atmosphere within the courtroom to the impression she once felt the winter before.
One February morning, for whatever reason, Scout experienced an ominous silence outdoors:
...the mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Maudie's new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight[ly] as the door of the Radley house. A deserted, waiting, empty street....
Now, the courtroom has this same feeling of a suspension of time. It is as though all the people in the courtroom are collectively holding their breath, not daring to think of what they will soon hear from the foreman of the jury. Scout and Jem and others know that the innocent "mockingbird" Tom Robinson, too, has stopped any "singing," for he is all too aware that his life hangs in the balance. In one sense, Mayella's untrue accusations, Bob Ewell's overt racism, and the oppressive of Jim Crow regime are all "doors" that are shut "tightly" against Tom.
Little Scout would not be familiar with Shakespeare's Hamlet, but the troubled young Dane comments in a similar fashion upon the state of things after he has been visited by his murdered father's ghost: "This time is out of joint." The eerie silence in the courtroom and the wicked injustice of Tom's trial serve to make Scout feel as though "time is out of joint."
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