When Atticus is handed the gun, he chooses not to kill the dog, but then he persuaded to kill the supposedly rabid dog. The dog was actually limping. Being a lawyer, he should have checked - limping does not mean dog-being-rabid.
If the point is of being protective about children, this point was blown out of propotation, when he clearly states to Jem that he would not be able to protect him or Scout all the time in a different scene.
So, why kill the dog?
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The dog was not limping if I remember correctly-he was jumping up and down having a fit.
shareIt's been a long time since I've seen it, so I'm not sure if it was limping or jumping up and down and having a fit or not. Even if it were only shown as limping, it would have been difficult to convincingly show a dog in the throes of rabies in a film at that time. But we the audience know the dog was rabid, and that's all that matters. The people in the town were experienced with rabid animals, and knew one when they saw one.
shareDon't worry ~~ the dog wasn't really killed. It was a stunt dog, and the only way that they could train it to show that it had rabies was to make it stagger erratically and appear to be limping. Because the camera did not do a close-up of the dog, we weren't treated to the sight of it foaming at the mouth, because then they would have had to force-feed it some shaving cream and the ASPCA would frown on that.
The dog did a great fall-down when the gun went off ~~ very well-trained stunt dog!
I'm just kidding, of course.
I just watched that scene. Dog had a thin cord or wire around its back leg and was pulled over by somebody outside of camera range.
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while the film did not show it as well as it could have, the dog had rabies and was rabid in the story.
there was no saving the animal but they could keep it from biting others by shooting it and destroying the body.
getting bit by a rabid animal was certain death, and not to be taken lightly.
even now it is very serious and people still die from it.
even today the treatment if you can catch it very early is gruesome and painful.
i know as my sister had to have a series of shots after being bitten.
getting bit by a rabid animal was certain death
Atticus didn't want to fire at the dog because he was afraid he would miss his aim. He even said it had been a long time since he had used a gun. Atticus even tells the sheriff to shoot.
The dog was clearly rabid. Look up rabies and see the symptoms.
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He had to. It had rabies. You could hear it growling! It was not acting like a normal dog!
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