Importance of the Trial in To Kill a Mockingbird
The trial of Tom Robinson is central to our understanding of racial and social prejudice in Maycomb. Harper Lee uses Tom Robinson's 'crime' to bring tensions in the town to a head and the author uses the trial as a way of making the ideas behind such tensions explicit for the reader.
The two people involved in the so-called crime, Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell, are at the very bottom of Maycomb society. Tom is black and Mayella one of the poorest of the poor whites. However, neither of them fits into the stereotypes held by the people of Maycomb. Tom is honest, hardworking and dependable, as Mr Link Deas's shouted testimony and his demeanour in court demonstrate. Mayella is a member of the poorest and most shiftless families in the town yet she looks after her brothers and sisters, keeps herself clean and tends to her geraniums in the most difficult of circumstances. It is clear that before the alleged rape a sort of friendship had grown up between Tom and Mayella.
Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was decent to (Mayella).
Unfortunately the ideas about race and society held at the time meant that contact between them could never be anything other than distant and respectful (quite apart from the fact that Tom was married anyway). But Mayella's yearning for some form of close human contact emerges during the trial. She had saved for almost a year to have enough nickels to give her brothers and sisters a treat in order to have her house empty when she invited Tom inside. When she made her advance to Tom he was caught by his inability to hit a white woman and the extreme taboo that Maycomb placed on any form of...
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...arrated by Scout is that her childish understanding is free of adult prejudice and expectations. She and Jem measure the proceedings against simple child-like ideas of truth and justice and find them grossly wanting. On the other hand Jem is an expert on court behaviour from watching her father on other occasions so she is able to give an insightful account into most aspects of the trial.
The Tom Robinson case shows the ugliness of both racial and social prejudice. Ultimately the jurors choose to vote along racial lines without regard for truth or justice. Mayella and Tom are both victims of Maycomb's prejudice but only Tom has to pay.
Works Cited
Jones, Carolyn. "Atticus Finch and the Mad Dog." The Southern Quarterly Summer 1996: 56-63.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York City, NY: J.B.Lippincott Company, 1990.
One of the major events in Harper Lee’s award-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is Tom Robinson’s trial. It is based on the Scottsboro Case that took place in 1931 in Alabama, in which several black men were accused of raping two white women. Both the Scottsboro Boys and Tom Robinson are unfairly judged, however, because of prejudice against colored people. The racial discrimination makes whites’ testimony more believable even when it contradicts itself. The same happens in To Kill a Mockingbird. As we delve deeper into the case and get increasingly closer to the truth, it is quite suprising to see that Mayella Ewell is the true villain rather than a victim. She shall and must bear full responsibility for her actions because she makes the decision to tempt Tom Robinson, gives false testimony in court that directly leads to Tom’s death, and has been well aware of the consequences of her behaviors.
Harper Lee takes inspiration for her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, from her own life experiences. The story tells about the lives of Jean Louise Finch and Jem Finch, the two children of a talented lawyer, who introduces them to racism and bigotry at a very young age. The Tom Robinson trial, similar to the Scottsboro trial, causes Jem and Scout to recognize the distinctly different types of people living in Maycomb. Man’s inhumanity to man compels Harper Lee to uncover the shameful acts of society; these injustices, especially those of the Tom Robinson trial, open Scout and Jem’s eyes to the defective perspectives held by society; reading To Kill A Mockingbird, leads me to wonder how far our society has truly come.
...an instead of his 16 year old self. The ducks are symbolic since they show Holden that some things are only temporary and that they do not always stay the same. The ducks vanish every winter but return once winter is over. It shows how the world and things are temporary and how they don’t stay the same forever. The pond is another symbol as it shows that it is “partly frozen and partly not frozen.” It is in two states just like Holden who is stuck between childhood and adulthood. “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.”
Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird portrayed an era of extreme prejudice and ignorance. Throughout the novel, these specific characteristics were noticed in the behavior of Maycomb’s residents, especially during the trial of Tom Robinson – a highly publicized court case involving a black man convicted of raping a white girl from a despicable family. Although it became obvious throughout the trial that Robinson was innocent, and the girl’s father was the real culprit, Tom Robinson was convicted mainly due to social prejudice toward his race. The unjust result of this trial deeply disturbed the main characters of the novel: Scout and Jem, the children of the defense attorney of the trial, Atticus Finch. Since the story took place in the 1930s, racism was still widely accepted in society, and most of the residents in Maycomb openly professed their derogatory views on people of a different race or social standard. Growing up in a family that believed in egalitarianism, Scout and Jem faced backlash from the community since their father was fighting for a black man in the Tom Robinson trial. Amid these two highly conflicting environments, Scout and Jem had many unanswered questions and no support in the community during these tough times. Additionally, the Maycomb community was plagued with injustice due to discrimination and racism. However, there was one character in the novel who remained open-minded and unprejudiced even in the face of tradition and communal ignorance. A close neighbor of the Finch’s, who shared the same moral views as Atticus, Miss Maudie served as a mother figure to young Scout and Jem, who were going through a tough time in the community. Although Miss Maudie may not have had enough power to change the prejudice...
In “To Kill A Mockingbird” the trial scene clearly conveys that the Town of Maycomb is prejudice and racist towards Tom Robinson. The trial grabbed the attention of the Town of Maycomb and the outcome changed the opinion of the community. Atticus Finch was the only lawyer that would take on the case and defend Tom Robinson. The case that was presented had charged Tom with brutal assault and rape of an “innocent” white girl. As we learn more about the background of Tom Robinson in the case, we find out he was a poor working class African American who was just trying to do his job and later was falsely convicted.
Tom Robinson, the man falsely accused of raping the poor, white woman, Mayella Ewell instills a sense of abject horror in most Maycomb citizens. Most of the irrational fear of Robinson is simply that, a fear. In the eyes of the residents in Maycomb, Tom resembles a snake in the grass, waiting for the right moment to strike and injure as many Whites as possible. Emancipation in the 19th century, still fresh in many Southerners’ minds, had already threatened to maneuver the black man socially ahead of the white man with its ongoing momentum. Ewell, therefore, relishes the opportunity to slander Robinson as well as to free himself of abusive charges towards his daughter and condemn a black man with the supportive racism of his peers. The accusation of being innately malicious, ignorant and spiteful is ironically how the black man appears to the vast majority of Maycomb's population. Most of those who describe Tom in this manner would fit that very description, waiting only to suppress Blacks and prolo...
The concept of a white woman being touched, let alone raped by an African American male was an assumption in the little town of Maycomb Alabama, 1930’s. During this period Mayella is considered helpless due to being a female as well as lonely and afraid considering her status as a poor white piece of trash. She manipulates people by using her social class, gender, and race to her advantage. In particular, her accusations made against Tom Robinson, an African American man. These factors lead to her gaining power with the trial and conviction of Tom Robinson. Race refers to the categorization of people based on physical differences.(“Is Mayella Powerful?” 7) Mayella Ewell had perquisites due to her race, which helped her during the conviction.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, Jem and Atticus represent moral justice because they defend Tom Robinson, while Bob Ewell and most of the town represent moral injustice and prejudice because they are against Tom Robinson just based on his race. The problem with this statement is, what defines justice and injustice? This is an interesting question, justice is usually seen as what is right, while injustice is seen as wrong, but who defines what is right or wrong. This is the interesting thing about human morals. In society what we define as right and wrong or justice and injustice can change over time. We look back at the time period of To Kill a Mockingbird and see the ideas that they had against african americans as totally wrong, but for them it was very normal. To people today Scout, Jem, and Atticus are seen as “good” people because they stood up for Tom Robinson and the African American community, but to people
The novel ‘Great Expectations’, by Charles Dickens, follows a young, socially inexperienced orphaned boy called Pip, through his journey, emphasizing his inability to adapt to life and relationships around him. His story is told through the eyes of the older Pip and highlights the aspects of society which Dickens disapproves of. His techniques throughout the novel help to give a better understanding of Pip's life. When Pip first encounters the escaped convict in the graveyard, the tense relationship between them is obvious to the reader, but all is revealed in chapter 39, where the readers meet both Pip and the convict again, and witness a role-reversal between them. The weather in the novel is significant; Dickens describes it in such a way that it creates an atmosphere using foreboding ominous imagery. This story of a lonely orphan in a mixed up world provides plenty of opportunities to consider the difficultly of an impoverished childhood in the nineteenth century and how hard it might have been for such a naïve and gullible young boy to survive in this time, especially with such harsh family circumstances. The theme of injustice, which is inherent throughout, explains some of the reasons why he has so many ‘great expectations.’
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