The Role Of The Mob In To Kill A Mockingbird

One day a mob stands in front of the narrator’s father, Atticus, and threatens him that they will kill his defendant. Atticus, a white attorney, spends his night in front Tom Robinson’s cell, who is really scared. Atticus faces the mob which comes and tries to lynch the accused rapist. They feel the need to defend their white superiority with violence and obtain a judgement even before the legal trial. It was a widespread practice to lynch accused blacks in the South even before a fair trial. The possibility for men becoming a victim of a lynching mob and for women being raped by whites was high. Linked to the decreasing standard of living and the fear of losing their position to blacks the number of men lynched in the 1930s “rose to an average of almost twenty per year.” (Johnson Without Tradition 4).

It constituted an enforcement of the conviction of unwritten laws the white privileged followed because the judicative in the United States did not provide the kind of justice they favored for defendants. The demonstration of Black’s powerlessness to boost their own feeling of superiority was common and practiced. When the mob in To Kill a Mockingbird arrives at Maycomb jail, Atticus sits in front of the door to ensure his defendant’s safety. Scout, Jem and a friend of them arrive at the jail where, the narrator Scout starts a conversation with a father of one of her classmates, Mr. Cunningham. That conversation apparently changes his mind as he is reminded of his own children and he tells the others to leave. Later Scout talks with her father about the events and encounters “a mob is always made