“ I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” [p.119] In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, this issue is mentioned various times. There are three mockingbirds, Mayella Ewell, Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. In order to catagorize them as mockingbirds, the reader has to know what a mockingbird is. So what does it mean to be a mockingbird? To be a mockingbird, you have to be innocent considering that is what a mockingbird symbolizes, innocence. As Miss Maudie says, “ Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, …show more content…
The crime was raping Mayella Ewell. In his testemony he says that Mayella came on to him but he not once came on to her because for one he’s a happily married man and for two because he doesn’t like her like that. They claimed that he raped her but there is absolutely no proof but the bruises on Mayella’s face which he could not have done considering his left arm is practically broke. Atticus proved that. The crime that was committed was not rape itself but discrimination. Just because Tom is a black man and Mayella is a white woman, she automatically is believed more than the black man. That is a crime. “But lots of folks have been hung--hanged--on circumstancial evidence” [p.294] He would’ve been hung before the trial even started if Atticus had not stopped them but after his conviction they achieved killing him, just mentally. He had no hope of being released. He didn’t have any hope at all that it drove him to kill himself. When he started climbing the gate he knew he wasn’t going to make it. So he committed suicide. Even Atticus says’ , “ Tom Robinson’s a colored man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world’s going to say ‘We think you’re guilty, but not very’ on a charge like that. It was either a straight acquittal or nothing. “ [p.294] “ You can’t take a cup of tea and turn it into lemonade. So don’t take a lie and turn it into the truth.” During this period in time hope wasn’t going to ever be givin to Tom. Reverend Sykes says, “... I ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…” [p.279] This shows that it was a racial matter, he wasn’t on trial for raping anybody but on trial for the color of his skin. Even Mr. Tate says, “there’s a black boy dead for no reason…” [p.369] No reason. Luckily we’re in the 21st century so he would have plenty of hope. He would have never gone to jail considering there’s absolutely no evidence. As Jem says, “... you just