Why does dill tell stories

In frustration, Scout begins a fight with Walter which Jem has to break up. Jem invites Walter to lunch.

Walter Cunningham is the son of Mr Cunningham, a proud but poor farmer who has been unable to pay Atticus for undertaking legal work for him.

Instead, Mr Cunningham has paid his legal bills in food which he has grown on his farm. On their way home from school, Jem and Scout begin to find gifts such as gum and old coins left in a hole in the oak tree outside the Radley house.

They realise the gifts must be meant for them but puzzle as to who could have left them. Dill's lies incense Scout, but she learns that "one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them," a statement that foreshadows Mayella's predicament.

Ironically, Dill, who so easily lies, sobs when the Ewells succeed in the lies they tell about Tom Robinson. Previous Jem Finch. Next Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks? My Preferences My Reading List. In some ways, because she is so young, Scout is an unreliable narrator.

Her innocence causes her to misunderstand and misinterpret things. The reader often has to do the work of interpretation to understand what characters are actually talking about, or judge the severity of a situation. At this point, Scout becomes more of an observer. Although there are some moments when she plays an active role in the events, such as the scene where she and Jem stop the mob from storming the jailhouse before the trial, for the most part the protagonist of these scenes is her father, Atticus.

During the trial, lengthy passages are related directly as dialogue. Unlike the earlier summaries that Scout uses to describe events, here the story slows to follow the trial sentence-by-sentence. We have no reason to believe Scout is misinterpreting events, because her descriptions of the action are straightforward and largely visual. At the end of the novel, when the trial is over and Bob Ewell attacks Scout and Jem on Halloween, Scout is once more at the center of events.