Journal #3- Chapters 8-9 from the perspective of Scout

For the first time in my life I woke up to see snow. At first I did not really know what it was and called Atticus. I thought that the world was coming to an end. He reassured me that it was just snow. Jem had never seen snow either. And school was closed during this time. Yay! We went over to Miss Maudie’s front lawn. We hauled snow from over there to our own yard. Jem started to collect dirt when we were back in our lawn. We had 5 buckets of dirt and 2 buckets of snow. We started to build the snowman then. When we were finishing up the mud layer, we thought it looked like Mr. Avery. It was so realistic, Atticus told us to not make it look like him. We borrowed Miss Maudie’s sun hat and hedge clippers. That night Atticus wakes me up. I was not fully away at that time and in a daze. Atticus said it was one in the morning and put on my robe and slippers. Atticus also entrusted Jem to stay with me at all times. Miss Maudie’s house is on fire. Everyone is helping her get her furniture out while me and Jem just stood there and watched from in front of the Radley’s place. The fire trucks arrive and stop the fire from spreading to other adjacent houses. It was cold out there and Jem’s arm was not enough to keep me warm. Eventually the fire dies down and we go back inside. At first Atticus gets mad at me and Jem for moving around. But we looked perplexed because we did not move from our spot. Atticus saw that and pointed down at a blanket that I was holding. I did not even see where that came from. Jem was just as shocked as I. Atticus said that Boo probably put it on us when we were out there. Despite losing her house, Miss Maudie is particularly happy the next day. She tells us that she hated her home and that she came close to burning it down a couple times. She says that she wants to build a smaller house so that she could have a bigger garden.

At school the next day, this kid named Cecil Jacobs comes up to me and starts to make Atticus look bad. Saying that he defends a nigger. I did not know what that meant but the way he said it made it sound bad. When I came home and told Atticus he just told me to keep my head up high and my fists down low. At Christmas a whole bunch of my family came. I did not really care about much of them. One of my cousins who is eight years old really bugged me though. He was calling Atticus bad names again because he was defending a black man in court. He said Nigger-Lover. I kept my cool for the longest of time then I broke. We got into a fight and he blamed it all on me. Uncle Jack didn't even hear my side of the story then. I got mad and screamed at him. When we were home, and I was isolated in my room, Uncle Jack made a visit. He apologized and wanted to hear my side of the story. Then after I said my side he had a look on his face that said he was sorry for punishing me. I debated and choose to forgive him. Later that night I heard Uncle Jack and Atticus talking. They were just talking about my incident earlier that day among other things. But towards the end Atticus caught me eavesdropping and told me to go to bed.