In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
describes the Radley house as a place to be feared and a source of
punishment, and, together with the Dubose place, it is much like a hell
where naughty children go:
The Radley Place was inhabited by an
unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to
make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain
hell.
The
place is characterized as a haunted house, where a ghost is thought to enact cruel deeds
at night:
Inside the house lived a
malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I
had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped
in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed
on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb
were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people's chickens and household pets were found
mutilated;
The
house is also anti-family and anti-community. The Radleys
keep to themselves and do not go to church. They sound like some kind of cult. Mr.
Radley carries strange, secretive things, all of which ironically
foreshadows what will happen later in the
novel:
The
misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were
born. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to
themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to
church, Maycomb's principal recreation, but worshiped at
home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning
coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Mr.
Radley walked to town at eleven- thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve,
is sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the
family groceries. I never knew how old Mr. Radley made his living-Jem said he "bought
cotton," a polite term for doing nothing-but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there
with their two sons as long as anybody could
remember.
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