What is mayellas attitude towards everyone in the courtroom

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The trial begins the next day. People from all over the county flood the town. Everyone makes an appearance in the courtroom, from Miss Stephanie Crawford to Mr. Dolphus Raymond, a wealthy eccentric who owns land on a river bank, lives near the county line, is involved with a Black woman, and has biracial children. Only Miss Maudie refuses to go, saying that watching someone on trial for his life is like attending a Roman carnival.

The vast crowd camps in the town square to eat lunch. Afterward, Jem, Scout, and Dill wait for most of the crowd to enter the courthouse so that they can slip in at the back and thus prevent Atticus from noticing them. However, because they wait too long, they succeed in getting seats only when Reverend Sykes lets them sit in the balcony where Black people are required to sit in order to watch the trial. From these seats, they can see the whole courtroom. Judge Taylor, a white-haired old man with a reputation for running his court in an informal fashion, presides over the case.

Summary: Chapter 17

The prosecutor, Mr. Gilmer, questions Heck Tate, who recounts how, on the night of November 21, Bob Ewell urged him to go to the Ewell house and told him that his daughter Mayella had been raped. When Tate got there, he found Mayella bruised and beaten, and she told him that Tom Robinson had raped her. Atticus cross-examines the witness, who admits that no doctor was summoned, and tells Atticus that Mayella’s bruises were concentrated on the right side of her face. Tate leaves the stand, and Bob Ewell is called.

Bob Ewell and his children live behind the town garbage dump in a tin-roofed cabin with a yard full of trash. No one is sure how many children Ewell has, and the only orderly corner of the yard is planted with well-tended geraniums rumored to belong to Mayella. An extremely rude little man, Ewell testifies that on the evening in question he was coming out of the woods with a load of kindling when he heard his daughter yelling. When he reached the house, he looked in the window and saw Tom Robinson raping her. Robinson fled, and Ewell went into the house, saw that his daughter was all right, and ran for the sheriff. Atticus’s cross-examination is brief: he asks Mr. Ewell why no doctor was called (it was too expensive and there was no need), and then has the witness write his name. Bob Ewell, the jury sees, is left-handed—and a left-handed man would be more likely to leave bruises on the right side of a girl’s face.

Analysis: Chapters 16–17

The trial is the most gripping, and in some ways the most important, dramatic sequence in To Kill a Mockingbird; the testimony and deliberations cover about five chapters with almost no digression. (Additionally, the courtroom scene, with Atticus picking apart the Ewells as the whole town watches, is the most cinematic portion of the narrative, and it is the centerpiece of the 1962 film version of the novel.) Though the trial targets Tom Robinson, in another sense it is Maycomb that is on trial, and while Atticus eventually loses the court case, he successfully reveals the injustice of a stratified society that confines Black people to the “colored balcony” and allows the word of a despicable, ignorant man like Bob Ewell to prevail without question over the word of a man who happens to be Black. In the trial conducted in the courtroom, Atticus loses. In the trial conducted in the mind of the reader, it is the white community, wallowing in prejudice and hatred, that loses.

Read more about To Kill a Mockingbird as a courtroom drama.

It is fitting that the children end up sitting in the “colored section” of the courthouse, just as it is fitting that Miss Maudie refuses to attend the trial. All three lack the racism that the crowd of white faces in the courtroom propagates. Jem, Scout, and Dill are segregated even from the other children, who have taunted Jem and Scout for loving Black people.

That the trial scene creates such an atmosphere of suspense is testimony to the author’s skill, because there is no real suspense; even Atticus knows that the verdict is a foregone conclusion. No matter what evidence is presented at the trial, the racist jury would never, under any circumstances, acquit a Black man accused of raping a white woman. The reader knows that Tom Robinson will be found guilty, so Lee locates the tension and suspense elsewhere—in Atticus’s slow but steady dismantling of the prosecution’s case. Jem, still clinging to his youthful illusions about life working according to concepts of fairness, doesn’t understand that his father’s brilliant efforts will be in vain. He believes that the irrefutable implications of the evidence will clinch the case for Atticus. When Jem says, “We’ve got him,” after Bob Ewell is shown to be left-handed, the reader knows better. Atticus, like Mrs. Dubose in her battle with morphine, is “licked” before he begins.

Read important quotes about law.

Bob Ewell’s real name is Robert E. Lee Ewell, a moniker that links him with the South’s past and makes him absurd by comparison with his namesake, General Robert E. Lee, who fought valiantly for the Confederacy in the Civil War despite his opposition to slavery. If Robert E. Lee represents the idealized South, then Bob Ewell epitomizes its darker and less respectable side, dominated by thoughtless prejudice, squalor, and meanness. Atticus’s admonition to Scout that she should increase her tolerance by stepping inside other people’s shoes does not apply to Bob Ewell. When Atticus tries to do so later, he only underestimates the depth of this little man’s wickedness. The irony, of course, is that Bob Ewell is completely unimportant; he is an arrogant, lazy, abusive fool, laughed at by his fellow townsfolk. Yet in the racist world of Maycomb, sadly, even he has the power to destroy an innocent man—perhaps the novel’s most tragic example of the threat posed to innocence by evil.

Read more about the Scottsboro Boys Trial, a case similar to the fictional trial in the novel.

Imagine your child is growing up in a short span, being tainted by the evils of man and the hearts of the prejudice. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and Jem Finch are forced to age early when their father takes an unpopular side in the courtroom. His children learn the up and downs of being social outcasts who’s father is a ‘nigger-lover’. Although through the course of their unexpected summer, they absorb many aspects of life that even the adults are oblivious to. In Andrew Cockburn’s article, There are more slaves today than were seized in Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slave trafficker Milorad Milakovic openly discusses his cooperation in this business. He enslaves women, men, and children …show more content…
Mayella Ewell is the most lonely soul in Maycomb County. The butterfly effect contributes by destroying solitude’s surroundings. “Miss Mayella...Who are your friends?....Friends?”(Lee 245). Mayella is confused and offended. She has no concept of what friends are and has never felt the compassion of having them. Mayella Ewell’s alienation creates a ripple onto the lives of the entirety of Maycomb. She might as-well have shot Tom herself. The second Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed, she had already pulled the trigger. In that moment, her seclusion had internally killed many. Bob Ewell is another prime example of a very lonely and disturbed man. Perhaps he is lonely because, he is the scum of Maycomb. “She says she never kissed a grown man before...She says what her papa do to her don’t count” (Lee 260). Bob Ewell is so lonely that he kisses his own daughter to make himself feel like he has someone. Yet with every kiss, she becomes further and further from him. Every kiss is a honed dagger to Mayella’s heart and health. Bob Ewell believes he has to live like this because he is beyond finding anyone to love him. No one is inclined to love him, so he forces Mayella to. When loneliness eats away at a soul, the victim becomes inclined to find others to relate to. The destructive power of solitude is an uncontrollable force that eats away at you. “They’re in the same boat as I was. Shut out. Deep down inside, we …show more content…
As Scout Finch is growing up, she is learning the secrets of life. She is maturing quickly and learning beyond her age, but as she is doing so, she is losing innocence after asking every question. “ What’s rape?” (Lee 180). As Scout is growing up, her inquiry is more present than ever. Once learning the answers to questions like these, recurrent losing of innocence occurs. Scout learning what rape is, is a symbol of her moving on from her childhood. Dill lost his innocence to the hate caused by the prejudice. “That old Mr.Gilmer doin’ him thataway, talking so hateful to him...It was the way he said it made me sick, plain sick” (Lee 265). Dill takes into account that Tom is still a person under his black skin. Him realise that how everybody treats colored folks is disgusting and immoral, causes Dill to lose innocence and become aware that the adult world isn’t about buying babies from a farm. He becomes physically sick to his stomach when he finds out how the prejudice behave towards people they dislike. Tom Robinson loses his innocence the second he is alone in the same room as Mayella Ewell. “ That nigger yonder took advantage of me” (Lee 251). Tom Robinson stood no chance of being innocent when he was testifying against white people. He was guiltless until Mayella Ewell screamed. He was guiltless until he went to court. And Tom Robinson was guiltless until he tried to escape his prison. Losing