It is
towards the end of of 's thatwitnesses
Arthur () Radley rescue her andthough she doesn't understand what she is witnessing until much
later.
Towards the end of Chapter 28, approximately 4 pages from the end,
Scout realizes a fourth person, aside from she, Jem, and whoever is attacking them, has appeared
under the tree. She hears one man cough "violently, a sobbing, bone-shaking cough" and
another man breath heavily. She then hears the man who was breathing heavily grope along on the
ground, "searching for something," and begin to "pull something heavy along the
ground." She feels along on the ground for Jem but only finds a bearded man who smells of
whiskey lying there. When she looks toward the street light, she sees a man
carrying Jem, staggering under the heavy load. The strange man and Jem are the
first to reach the Finch's home, and Jem is immediately carried into his room. Chaos erupts
inside the Finch household as both Dr. Reynolds and Sheriff Tate are notified. It's not until
after Dr. Reynolds arrives and examines both Jem and Scout that Scout is able to go into her
brother's room to see him. Once in Jem's room, she sees for the first
time the man who carried Jem home but
only recognizes him as "some countryman [she] did not
know."
It is not until the final page of
that Scout realizes who the man is and who rescued her and Jem. In
Chapter 29, she recounts the events of the attack as she remembers them toand Sheriff Tate in
Jem's room while he sleeps. As she recounts events and turns to the man in the room for his own
version, she notices the whiteness of his skin, sees his nervousness, and sees him timidly smile
at her. It's at this moment she realizes she is seeing her neighbor Arthur for the
first time, and the realization brings her to tears. As he smiles at her, she
describes that her "neighbor's image [became] blurred with [her] sudden tears." These
tears are tears of gratitude and a certain
sign she has finally shed all of the false assumptions she had developed about
Arthur and has come to feel affection for him; she now sees him as
the children's savior, which allows her to see him as the tender, caring, albeit reclusive, man
he truly is.
Though it took Scout nearly the entire book to develop affection
for her neighbor Arthur, Jem develops affection much
sooner since he is quicker to understand things than Scout due to his age. Jem
develops affection for Arthur the moment Jem realizes that it is Arthur who has been leaving the
children gifts in the knothole of the oak tree on the Radleys' property. Scout and Jem decide to
leave a thank-you note to whoever is leaving the gifts, and Jem is
devastated to find that Arthur's brother Nathan had filled in the hole with
cement. Jem is devastated because not only does he no longer have any means of expressing his
gratitude, he also has no means of making amends for having mocked Arthur. In fact, Jem is so
devastated that he is moved to tears, as Scout notes in the
following:
He stood there [on the porch, looking towards
the Radleys' property] until nightfall, and I waited for him. When we went in the house I saw he
had been crying. (Ch. 7)
Jem's tears, just like Scout's
tears later, are a certain sign that Jem early on had begun to see Arthur as a kind and caring
person and develop affection for him.
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