Heck Tate Quotes

I was more at home in my father’s world. People like Mr. Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 24. Scout’s reaction to the world of men vs women. She is searching for where she fits in. She is more at home in the world of men and more comfortable acting as a tomboy. But at the same time she is curious about the world of women.

“Heck,” Atticus’s back was turned. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus thinks it was Jem who stabbed Bob Ewell, in self-defense, but he refuses to have Sheriff Heck Tate hush it up. He taught his children to lead honest, decent lives, so he feels he cannot be party to spreading a lie and undoing everything he has tried to teach them.

“Heck, can’t you even try to see it my way?…if they don’t trust me they won’t trust anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear of me saying downtown something different happened – Heck, I won’t have them anymore. I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Atticus to Sheriff Heck Tate, on the matter of hushing up the truth about Jem’s possible role in Bob Ewell’s stabbing. Atticus is acutely aware that his children look up to him as their role model and he is determined to remain a good example to them. He knows that if he is two-faced and lives a life of duplicity, then he will lose their trust and them. Atticus is a very moral person who puts a high value on truth.

“I’m not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff of Maycomb County. Lived in this town all my life an’ I’m goin’ on forty-three years old. Know everything that’s happened here since before I was born. There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. After Bob Ewell is found dead, Atticus wants Sheriff Tate to do a formal report especially because he worries Jem may be involved. But Tate wants Atticus to let the death of this terrible man who was responsible for the death of an innocent black man go, as he sees a kind of justice in it.

“I never heard tell that it’s against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you’ll say it’s my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what’d happen then? Know what’d happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin’ my wife’d be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight – to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it’d be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 30. Sheriff Heck Tate suggests to Atticus that Boo Radley was the person responsible for killing Bob Ewell. But Tate goes against the letter of the law when he says that the killing prevented a crime and suggests an investigation would only bring acute pain to Boo Radley. He advocates a cover up and that they should stay silent.
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