Tom Robinson was a black man who in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, was convicted of a crime simply because of the color of his skin. His case was much of the underlying meaning behind the book itself, and was the main reason it earned its reputation and recognition. Tom Robinson was affected by prejudice and killed by it in extension to his supposed rape of a white woman. There was no evidence supporting his guilty sentence, but because he was black and those who spoke out against him were white he was found guilty Tom Robinson lived in the black part of Maycomb, and helped a white woman by the name of Mayella Ewell. On one certain day, she was alone in her house and invited him to come inside to help her with something. She shen attempted …show more content…
The entire story seemed to be based around it, not the other way around. It showed the way the world was during the depression, and the casual racism that existed so freely back then. “nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.” The story existed to shed light on the way the world was even as it was being written, including the parts many novels didn’t dare to keep in. At the time reading this book was like being Scout, having your eyes opened to the true nature of the world including all the horrors it holds. “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads- they couldn’t be fair if they treid. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s word, the white always wins. They’re ugly, but these are the facts of life.” Concepts like this enthused some and enraged others. By extension into the real world, the story of Tom Robinson aided the Civil Rights Movement, and in the book giving Jem and Scout a taste of the real