Skip to main content

Who seems to be sleeping, but is actually listening during the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird? (a) Atticus (b) Judge Taylor (c)...

The correct answer is (b) Judge Taylor.


Judge Taylor closes his eyes at times, but he is not asleep. Instead, he is listening carefully.


In Chapter 16, Scout alludes to Judge John Taylor as "a sleepy old shark," meaning that he appears to be sleeping, but he is as swift as a shark to react if anyone disrupts his court.
Alluding to one instance in which a lawyer thought that the judge was dozing, the attorney dropped books off the table, hoping to startle and embarrass the judge as he awakened. The angered judge simply opened one eye calmly and told the lawyer if he did this action again, there would be a large fine assessed.


Further, Scout recounts that Judge Taylor conducts his court with a surprising informality as he often props up his feet and cleans his fingernails with a pocket knife. However, much like his apparent drowsiness, these rather rustic behaviors belie a sharp intellect and often deceive lawyers into thinking that they might be able to slip in some questions and remarks. In truth, however, Judge Taylor has "a firm grip on any proceedings."


In Chapter 19, for instance, Judge Taylor "wakes up" and becomes stentorian as he reacts when Mr. Link Deas stands up in court and wants to attest to Tom Robinson's character:



"Shut your mouth, sir!" Judge Taylor was wide awake and roaring. He was also pink in the face. His speech was miraculously unimpaired by his cigar. "Link Deas,....Get out of this room, sir, you hear me? I'll be damned if I'll listen to this case again!"



Clearly, Judge Taylor is very attentive to the trial and reacts immediately when something occurs which could cause a mistrial even though at times he appears somnolent. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more