Dill Harris Quotes

Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t scared of anything: “It’s just that I can’t think of a way to make him come out without him gettin’ us.” Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.
When he said that, I knew he was afraid.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 1. Dill accuses Jem of being scared. Jem tries to act like the older kid and Scout’s protective brother and show that he is brave when it comes to Boo Radley. Scout’s interpretation from Jem’s words is that he is afraid of Boo.

Dill was becoming something of a trial anyway, following Jem about. He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it…said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. They spent days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me only when they needed a third party.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 5. As one friendship goes into decline – that of Scout and Dill – another one is born – Dill and Jem.
shut up for a hundred years with nothin' but cats to eat - Boo Radley in To Catch a Mockingbird

Dill said, “We’re askin’ him real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in there – we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice cream.”
“You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!”
Dill said, “It’s my idea. I figure if he’d come out and sit a spell with us he might feel better.”
“How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years with nothin’ but cats to eat? I bet he’s for a beard down to here – “

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 5. Dill and Jem cook up a plan to drop a note into Boo Radley’s window with a fishing pole to get him to come out. Dill expresses some sympathy for Boo being shut up in his house for so long, while Scout is terrified Boo will kill them. The reclusive Boo is a victim of prejudice in Maycomb, and in the minds of children like Jem he is a figure of fear.

Then I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hat on. At first I thought it was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, and tree trunks never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight, And the shadow, crisp and toast, moved across the porch towards Jem.
Dill saw it next. He put his hands to his face.
When it crossed Jem, Jem saw it. He put his arms over his head and went rigid.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 6. Scout joins Jem and Dill to invade the Radley yard at night and get a sneak look at Boo Radley through a window. When the shadow of a man walks past they get the fright of their lives and flee. Not a minute too soon, as Nathan Radley then fires off his shotgun into the air.

Dill recited this narrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement…by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help…Dill worked himself free.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 14. When Dill’s mother remarries, he hopes he will at last get a real father. But it doesn’t work out so he runs away from family – and he makes up this incredible story about being chained in a basement and escaping and then joining a traveling animal show. Dill’s family is very different than the Finches, he feels is parents don’t pay enough attention to him.

Dill’s eyes flickered at Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down the hall. “Atticus,” his voice was distant, “can you come here a minute, sir?”
Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill’s face went white. I felt sick.
…Jem was standing in a corner of the room, looking like the traitor he was. “Dill, I had to tell him,” he said. “You can’t run three hundred miles off without your mother knowin’.”
We left him without a word.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 14. Jem breaks the last remaining code of childhood – not to tell on each other to adults – when he tells Atticus about Dill running away from home. But Jem knew that Dill’s parents would be worried, so he decides it is for the best to break the code.

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lighting, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 14. Dill Harris has run away from home to be with his friends Scout and Jem. Highly intelligent, creative and sensitive, as revealed in this insightful description by Scout, he is also lonely. He dreams of a twilight world where children like him will be hugged and coddled and greatly loved, like the world he shares with the Finch childen.

“Well, Mr. Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him ‘boy’ all the time an’ sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury every time he answered – ”
“Well, Dill, after all he’s just a negro.”
“I don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ’em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that – it just makes me sick.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Dill Harris complains to Scout about the way prosecutor Mr. Gilmer questioned Tom Robinson in court. Dill is not like a lot of the children in Maycomb, who are products of their parents racist teaching. Rather he is sensitive to the unjust treatment meted out to a black man in the judicial system.

“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
“Yes, sir, a clown…There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.”
“You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.”
“Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22. Dill is upset and traumatized after witnessing racial injustice firsthand as Tom Robinson is wrongly convicted of assaulting and raping Mayella Ewell. He decides that he is going to be a clown when he grows up, a non-traditional one who laughs at people.
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