To Kill a Mockingbird is a book by Harper Lee, which was later made into a film with the same name. The story is set in the 1930s American South, in the “tired old town” (Lee 5) of Maycomb, a place which she fabricated for the purpose of her book. The main characters in this book are Scout Finch, a tomboyish six-year-old, her older brother Jem and their new eccentric friend Dill.
As the reader, we see the dramatic events of To Kill a Mockingbird through the eyes of Scout, an innocent child. The majority of Scout’s summer days are spent in the treehouse playing games with Jem and Dill. Atticus, the father of the Jem and Scout, is chosen to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white girl. After Atticus accepts the case, the atmosphere in the town becomes more tense, and jeers are hurled at Jem and Scout in the school playground. At the trial, it is alleged that Tom entered the Ewell property at Mayella’s request to chop up a chiffarobe and that Mayella showed signs of having been beaten around that time. One of Atticus’ defensive arguments is that Tom’s left arm is disabled due to a farming accident years ago, yet the supposed rapist would have had to mostly assault Mayella with his left hand before allegedly raping her. Another question Atticus raises is that there was no doctor called to check in on Mayella after her supposed assault. This is something that her father, Bob Ewell, should have done. This lack of urgency could suggest that there is something Bob Ewell is trying to conceal. If Bob was the one who beat Mayella, which is implied by Atticus when he asks “is he good to you, is he easy to get along with?” (Lee 186), then it would make sense that he was reluctant to call a doctor for her; the last thing he wants is to be implicated in any way.
In his closing argument, Atticus asks the all-white male jury to cast aside their prejudices and focus on Tom’s obvious innocence. However, Tom is found guilty. As Atticus exits the courtroom, the black spectators in the balcony rise to show their respect and appreciation. To people watching the film or reading the book, this act towards Atticus in this scene makes it more suggestive that Tom Robinson is innocent and everyone knows it; implying that the jury is clearly experiencing bias from the colour of his skin. The people on the balcony, all of them black because of the seating arrangement, showing their respect to Atticus is a very powerful action; they can almost predict the troubles that will follow him and his family because he took on a case to defend a black man. It shows to me that, actually innocent or not, a black man is usually going to be ‘guilty’ in the society that Scout lives in, and anyone who dares to associate with the accused person of colour, or worse yet anyone who agrees with them, is going to be subject to similar treatment from the society that surrounds them.
We see the inhumane treatment of black people even after Tom Robinson’s trial, where he is shot 17 times for trying to escape. As if being sentenced to prison isn’t enough of a punishment for a supposed crime, Tom Robinson’s death was another hint at the unfairness of the treatment of black people during this time period; he wasn’t even allowed to die in a humane way. The fallout from the trial impacts not only Atticus but also Scout and Jem. Later on in the book, Bob Ewell “stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of his life.” (Lee 221) It is clear that in Atticus’ attempts to carry out justice for Tom Robinson, he offended Bob Ewell in the process. I think for Bob Ewell, Atticus helping Robinson, believing a black man over him, made Ewell feel disrespected.
Unfortunately, Bob Ewell was far from done with his ‘revenge’ for being disrespected. Near the end of the book, Scout and Jem are walking home from the school pageant when they are attacked. In the process, Jem’s arm is broken, but Scout’s ham costume prevents her from most of the damage that would have otherwise been caused. After a struggle between two unknown figures, Scout manages to escape her costume to see Boo Radley carrying the unconscious Jem home. After arriving home it is revealed that Bob Ewell attacked the children, and Boo Radley managed to stop the assault and probable attempted murder by killing Ewell. This is a lesson for Scout as it teaches her not to judge a person by what she has heard, but for the reader it shows the viciousness and the lengths that Bob Ewell was willing to go to for revenge. Perhaps he thought he could regain some dignity that was lost during the trial.
This again shows to me that in the time period and place that Scout was growing up in, siding with black people, even in a professional sense, would upset the wider community and there would be consequences. I think that this book can act as a lesson, that although some people may not see or understand social issues, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist; like how Scout does not seem to understand the purpose of the mob trying to lynch Tom Robinson, and doesn’t understand that her schoolyard taunts are related to her father’s involvement in the case of a black man against a white woman. The social hierarchy is also something that struck me. We see that the divide between the richer white people and the poorer white people seemed to contain hints of pretentiousness, for example when Scout asks “are we as poor as the Cunninghams?”(Lee 21) but the divide between white people and black people was the difference between humane treatment and inhumane treatment. It becomes clear through social interactions that white people seemed to have respect for each other, but many of them had no respect for black people; I am sure that the mob that showed up to lynch Tom Robinson would never dream of doing the same if a white man had been accused of the same crime.
As someone living in a time period where this type of behaviour has been significantly reduced, it is shocking to see how black people were treated.
However, it also saddens me to be able to draw similarities between that period and our current one. In the case in the book, Tom Robinson is accused of a crime and found guilty because of obvious bias and lack of defensible evidence. This reminds me of the Central Park Five case, where the prosecutors were so eager to charge anyone that they were willing to do almost anything, using techniques such as inhumane interrogation techniques. It can also be said that the jury involved in the Central Park Five case were also biassed, perhaps because all of the boys involved were people of colour and perhaps also because of the publicity surrounding the case. In both situations, the accused were quite obviously innocent as there was evidence that the crimes could not possibly have been committed by the accused; Tom Robinson could not use his left arm yet Mayella had clearly been beaten by a left handed person, and that there was no DNA for the Central Park Five anywhere near the crime scene, but that didn’t prevent the shooting and killing of Tom Robinson, or the prison sentences of the five boys.
Works Cited:
Lee, Harper . To Kill a Mockingbird. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1960.
Author(s):
Emma Somers