Absolute Morphodite Snowman

The Absolute Morphodite Snowman is a snow sculpture built by Jem and Scout Finch during a rare snowfall in Maycomb, Alabama. It begins as a mud-and-snow caricature of their neighbor Mr. Avery, then is transformed by Atticus Finch into a figure resembling Miss Maudie Atkinson, and finally is destroyed in the fire that consumes Miss Maudie's house. The snowman serves as a symbol of childhood creativity, social transgression, and the community's response to the unusual and the grotesque.

Creation and Design

The snowman was born from a rare event: for reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year, bringing the coldest weather since 1885. Scout, who had never seen snow, initially thought the world was ending. Jem, who had also never seen snow but knew what it was, devised a plan to build a real snowman despite the meager, slushy snowfall. He directed Scout to haul snow from Miss Maudie's yard into their own, using an old peach basket. To create enough mass, Jem dug earth from behind the woodpile, filling the laundry hamper with dirt and carrying it to the front yard. With five baskets of earth and two baskets of snow, he constructed a torso of mud, then used peachtree switches to form an armature. He molded a big stomach below the figure's waistline, and when Scout remarked that it looked like Miss Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips—fat in the middle and little-bitty arms—Jem glanced at her, his eyes twinkling, and said, "Mr. Avery's sort of shaped like a snowman, ain't he?" He then plastered snow over the mud figure, gradually turning Mr. Avery white. Using bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, Jem succeeded in making Mr. Avery look cross, and a stick of stovewood completed the picture.

Community Reaction and Transformation

When Atticus Finch came home for dinner, he was surprised to see most of the back yard in the front yard, but he praised Jem's ingenuity, saying, "from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea." However, Atticus then squinted at the snowman and laughed, declaring, "You've perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard. We've got to disguise this fellow." He suggested Jem hone down the creation's front, swap a broom for the stovewood, and put an apron on him. Jem protested that doing so would make the snowman muddy and cease to be a snowman, but Atticus insisted, "You can't go around making caricatures of the neighbors." Jem then raced across the street, disappeared into Miss Maudie's back yard, and returned triumphant, sticking her sunhat on the snowman's head and jamming her hedge-clippers into the crook of his arm. Atticus said that would be fine. Miss Maudie, seeing the transformed figure from her porch, called out, "Jem Finch, you devil, bring me back my hat, sir!" but Atticus explained she was really impressed. She later told Atticus that he had "erected an absolute morphodite in that yard!"

Destruction and Aftermath

The snowman's existence was brief. The snow stopped in the afternoon, the temperature dropped, and by nightfall the thermometer registered sixteen degrees, the coldest night in Atticus's memory. The snowman outside froze solid. That night, Miss Maudie's house caught fire. As the Abbottsville fire truck pumped water on the Finch house, Scout watched their Absolute Morphodite go black and crumble; Miss Maudie's sunhat settled on top of the heap. The hedge-clippers were lost in the debris. The next day, Jem and Scout found the sunhat suspended in a thin layer of ice, like a fly in amber, and had to dig under the dirt for the hedge-clippers. When they returned the items to Miss Maudie, she was gazing at her frozen charred azaleas but took the loss of her house with remarkable equanimity, saying she had always wanted a smaller house and more yard for her azaleas. The snowman, a product of rare snow and childhood imagination, was consumed by the fire that also destroyed a home, marking a transition from winter's novelty to the harsh realities of loss and community crisis.