1. When Atticus Finch states that one day people will settle the accounts for discrimination that happened back in the day and today, he means that white people will get revenge, or some sort of punishment for inciting horrific words, and acts upon black people. In the novel, an example of white people settling the account for discrimination against black people is Bob Ewell. This man falsely accuses an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, for raping his daughter Mayella. Days later, he was killed trying to murder two innocent children. The consequence for him causing harm to Tom Robinson was death. In this day and age we see many white cops shooting young, unarmed, black males almost every week, but the cops do not get any punishment. Therefore, …show more content…
The jury’s verdict for the Tom Robinson trial was guilty. The reasons why the verdict was guilty, is simply because they were racist. They all heard clear evidence on how Tom was guilty from Atticus, but if anyone on the jury were to disagree that a black man was innocent, they would have been shamed by the whole county. This case is based off of the real world trial involving the 9 black boys who were accused of raping 2 white women on a train, in Scottsboro. These boys were ranged from 13 to 20 years old, and everyone was put on death row, except the minor who got life in prison. Harper Lee used this trial and created many parallels between the Scottsboro Boys case and the Tom Robinson case. The similarities include the idea of black men being accused of raping white women. In the Scottsboro case, these boys were illegally riding a train on their way home and along them were 2 white women. These women were pressured by the cops to accuse these young men of raping them. Similarly, in Tom Robinson’s case, he was innocently walking home when Mayella Ewell called him over, and almost raped him. When Bob Ewell saw this, he beat Mayella, and forced her to file a lawsuit against Tom Robinson for raping her. Another relationship between these two cases is the verdict. Both of them were found guilty and put on death row, even though there was clear medical and logical evidence that no rape had occured, the all white, male jury had come to an idiotic conclusion that somehow …show more content…
Throughout this novel, Scout goes through many realities of the adult world. When she is young, she learns about people in poverty, like Walter Cunningham in her class. When he comes over to her house, he starts piling food onto his plate like he has never eaten before. Then as he pours a ton of molasses onto his food, Scout decides to speak up. “But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup. He poured it all over--” (Lee 24). What she did not understand was that his family was less fortunate than the Finch’s, and he did not get to eat like this at home. Seconds later, Scout learns one of the limits of adult patience when Calpurnia calls her into the kitchen to scold her. “Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, and don’t let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was so high and mighty! Yo’ folks might be better’n than the Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’ ‘em-- if you can’t act fit to eat at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen” (Lee 25). The message Calpurnia was trying to get across was that although Walter might be poor, you should not treat him like he is something less. Since Scout is young, she fails to understand this lesson in the moment, but realizes this later on in the novel when she is an adult reflecting back at how everything has impacted her. Atticus also teaches Scout about courtesy. This is a big part of the novel because she understands this lesson as she