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Who Is To Blame For Tom's Death Analysis

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Harper Lee uses the perspectives different characters to show her own views about who is responsible for Tom’s death, as well as to portray the complexity of the blame in such a prejudice society. Tom represents many other African-Americans who, like Tom died for things they didn’t do, for reasons beyond their control. Through Scout, Jem and Atticus’ opinions about Tom’s death, Lee demonstrates how her opinion on who is to blame for the deaths, shifts and evolves over time. Lee is very much like Scout in that she too grew up in a small town, with a lawyer for a father. Since both Lee and Scout grew up in around the same time period as well, Lee too would have had to struggle to understand and come to terms with the racial injustice happening …show more content…

Like Lee’s father, Atticus is a well-respected lawyer who has intelligence as well as strong morals. Atticus is also the loving father of the narrator, Scout. Atticus’s beliefs are very influential to Scout and Jem just as Lee’s father 's views must have been very influential for her. Lee uses Atticus to demonstrate her own views in many ways, including her view on who is to blame for Tom’s death. Although Atticus’s speech to the jury at the end of the trial puts the blame into the hands of each individual juror, and although he is unable to understand how they could convict Tom, Atticus doesn’t ever blame them directly. Instead, Atticus blames something he doesn’t fully understand: “There is something in our world that makes men lose their heads---they couldn’t be fair if they tried” (295). Through Atticus, Lee’s blame of this societal plague is apparent. Lee, however, even as an adult, does not seem to exempt the Jury from as much of the blame as Atticus does, nor perhaps as much as she would like …show more content…

On a simplistic level, the case is a man falsely accused of rape. This is young Scout’s perspective so she assigns the blame at the simplest level. She blames the Ewell’s whose lies would eventually cause Tom’s death. On a more in-depth level, the case is a man falsely accused of rape then convicted despite considerably more than reasonable doubt. This is teenage Jem’s perspective so he assigns the blame to two levels, the Ewells who falsely accused Tom and the jury which convicted Tom despite knowing he was most likely innocent. On the most in-depth level of the story, the case is a black man in a prejudiced society falsely accused of raping a white girl then convicted by a white jury despite more than reasonable doubt. This is adult Atticus’s perspective but instead of placing blame at all the levels, he assigns the blame mainly on one level, a level he can’t explain but that incorporates most of society, prejudice. To Lee, however, it is not just one case it is all the cases she has witnessed, heard about or read about and the ones she hasn’t. It is not just one family accusing or one jury convicting but the whole society whose prejudice, passed on for generations, has come between individuals and reason. Lee grew from a young girl to a teenager to an adult in a very similar setting to Maycomb with many similar

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Scout and Jem are forced to deal with racial slurs and insults because of Atticus ' role in the trial. Scout has a very difficult time not physically fighting with other children due to this. Tom is asfsd to be guilty, even after Atticus proves that Tom did not commit the crime. Atticus unintentionally offends Bob Ewell, the father whose daughter is accusing Tom.

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In the book, racial prejudice is a main theme, Atticus is defending the black man accused of rape was said to be guilty, however all of Atticus’s claims proved him to be innocent. In the book Lee states, “I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it- seems only children weep. Good Night,”( Lee, 213).

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The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about two kids, Jem and Scout, and their childhood in their small town Maycomb, Alabama. In the beginning of the novel, Jem and Scout were two innocent kids playing in the summer sun, until school came along. Jem was about twelve throughout the novel and Scout was eight, and considering that Jem was twelve in the novel, he was changing. During the middle of the novel a rape trial occurred, which included a black man being accused by a white woman of first-degree rape. Atticus, the kid’s father was defending the african american man; Tom Robinson.

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When Scout and Jem saw how hard Atticus was working for this trial they hoped that Tom would be found not guilty and felt he was not treated appropriately by the other court members. Atticus is a good father because he teaches his children to treat people with respect and

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Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird is about a man named Atticus and his two kids Jem and Scout. Atticus was appointed to defend an African American, named Tom Robinson. Tom was accused by Bob Ewell for raping and beating his daughter, Mayellea Ewell. During the trial scene, everyone in that courtroom finds outs the truth that Tom is innocent against the accusations from Bob. The truth is that Mayella kissed Tom and Bob saw what she did.

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As they get more and more inquisitive, they try to find the reasons through which they can draw him out of his house. Concurrently, Atticus is the lawyer who is defending Tom Robinson, a black man who has been falsely accused of rape and this shows the town's racist attitudes. The main characters of the latter chapters encountered opposition due to the fact that Atticus was on Tom's side. The coming of Aunt Alexandra inevitably makes the situation even more complicated due to her strict ideas about the social class. Although Atticus tried to prove Tom's innocence, Tom is still unjustly sentenced, which causes Scout and Jem to lose their illusion of the town's racism and injustice.

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Atticus always has a sense of doing what is right and tries to get Scout to do the same thing he does. Parents, whether good or bad, are the most important and influential persons in the kid’s life.

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Lee displays this through the trial of Tom Robinson, and despite the overwhelming evidence in Tom's favour, he is still found guilty due to the racist beliefs and prejudices of the jury. However, Atticus's defence of Tom is rooted in his ability to empathise with Tom's experiences and to see the world from his perspective. He notes, "The witnesses for the state have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption – the evil assumption – that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings" (Page 205). Therefore, Atticus shows how empathy can be a powerful force for justice and equality. Additionally, in the aftermath of Tom Robinson's death, the tragedy of Tom's wrongful conviction and subsequent death, suggests that his legacy lives on through the compassion and empathy of those who knew him.

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Lee also makes use of conflict when Tom Robinson gets charged as guilty in court. “Judge Taylor was polling the jury: “Guilty…guilty…guilty…guilty…”’(282). With Tom Robinson getting charged guilty, Scout realizes that things are not always going to be right, and people will always try to lie to benefit themselves, ultimately changing how she now thinks about things. Lee uses the courtroom to ultimately expose Scout to the real events that are going on, granting her a better understanding of her society and changing how she thinks about things

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Displaying Jem’s maturity, this statement is also a prime example of how not only adults use reason. Furthermore, Scout learns that others can use logic no matter their age. On the other hand, the jury of the court case applied only their feelings when deciding the final ruling. Later in the discussion Jem and Atticus had, Atticus explains, “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads– they couldn’t be fair if they tried” (251). The men of the jury’s senses of reason had been altered due to their own ignorance of the facts presented in the case and the fact that they do not have enough courage to say that a black man is innocent.

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For many in the south, particularly African-Americans, the American Dream was well out of reach, due to the legal and social injustice they faced. This shines in Lee’s writing, as it is established in the novel the Tom Robinson, on trial for sexually assaulting a white girl, is innocent. His lawyer, Atticus Finch, makes it quite clear to the jury that he is telling the truth, (as he only has one working hand it’s difficult to grab someone by the throat) and that the victim is lying. But since this is 1930’s Alabama, a white person’s word is worth far more than a black man’s, and so he is wrongly convicted.

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In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee demonstrates the small, imaginary town, the Maycomb County, as a place where racism and social inequality happens in the background of 1930s America. Not only the segregation between whites and blacks, but also the poor lived in a harsh state of living. As Scout, the young narrator, tells the story, Lee introduces and highlights the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb County by using various characters such as Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Mayella Ewell. Firstly, Harper Lee portrays Boo Radley as a victim of social inequality through adjectives and metaphor in the phrase, “There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten;” ‘Long jagged scar that ran across his face’ tells us that Boo Radley has stereotype about his appearance, which forces to imagine Boo as a scary and threatening person. The phrase, ‘yellow and rotten’ make the readers think as if Boo Radley is poor and low in a social hierarchy, as he cannot afford to brush his teeth.

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