In Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, young Scout does not like to look at Mrs. Dubose any more than she must. Mrs. Dubose is so old that her wrinkles are very deep, she has liver spots, and she drools profusely. In chapter 11, Scout accompanies her brother to Mrs. Dubose's house to read to her. On the first day that the children visit her, Scout describes Mrs. Dubose as follows:
"Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin . . . from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster" (106).
Through Scout's analysis of Mrs. Dubose's physical appearance, there seems to be a significant amount of drooling going on. Scout's description mostly focuses on Mrs. Dubose's face, but she also notices her old hands and "knobby knuckles," which must look terrifying to a young girl. The first physical description of Boo Radley is given by Jem in chapter 1 as follows:
"Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained--if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time" (13).
One common denominator between the description of Mrs. Dubose and the one for Boo Radley is the drooling. There is also a connection between the scar on Boo's face and the deep wrinkles found on Mrs. Dubose's. These details provide visual images that are usually associated with villains or monsters as children might interpret them.
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