Empathy In To Kill A Mockingbird

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Tom Robinson is a black man who is wrongly accused and tried for the crime of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman, and is being defended by his lawyer, Atticus Finch. According to the book it’s written “I guess Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own.” This shows how Tom struggled emotionally because Tom was emotionally tired of being controlled by others, letting others have the opportunity to control his life and what happened to his family. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, Tom ran for it even though he knew there were high risks of him being killed, which shows how the caged bird in the poem “Caged Bird” is much like him. In the poem “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, the caged bird is compared and contrasted to a free bird and by examining the circumstances of Tom Robinson’s life, I say that he is very much like the caged bird. For instance, in stanza two it’s stated “His wings are clipped and/ His feet are tied/ So he opens his throat to sing.” If we compare the bird’s wings to Tom Robinson’s hope, the feet to his heart, and his action of  running to the action of opening his throat to sing, we can visualize the song that Tom Robinson would sing, one about him losing hope and not wanting anyone to control his life anymore, and so in this manner he is very much like the

Tom was the main example of the Negros stereotype. Tom was a respectable, humble, honest, helpful, and kind man. He had a family to provide for and a house to take care of. He was wrongly accused by Bob Ewell, a very poor white man, of raping his daughter Mayella Ewell. Tom was a happily married man who was cripple from a cotton gin accident so obviously, he could not have done it.

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. Ewell then says he will get revenge on Atticus.

In To Kill A Mockingbird they make it a struggle for the jury to choose the right decision of who’s guilty and innocent, or the skin color in which they like or dislike. Mayella lies about Tom Robinson because of her bad decisions she’s made. A decision Mayella has made was just having Tom Robinson doing work for her. She should know better that it wouldn’t settle well with her father. After Mayella had Tom help her get rid of items, she began to like Tom.

A very similar thing happens in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Bob Ewell accuses Tom Robinson of raping his daughter Mayella, but Atticus proves that it was most likely Bob who did it. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s dad, the person who should be protecting her at all costs. The most common injustice in the novel appears when the kids find the case between Tom Robinson and the Ewell family to be unfair, highly illogical, and racist. When the verdict of guilty is revealed to the town, Jem becomes upset and says, “You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that- you can’t”

Respect is a hand, calling out, waving, waiting to be picked on to express its views on a topic. People look up to it, and admire its nobility and intelligence. The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is set during the time of the Great Depression and the Jim Crow laws, when black people and white people did not have the same rights as each other. The book is told in the point of view of Scout, a young girl whose father is a lawyer for a trial for Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson is a black man who was accused of raping a young white girl, Mayella Ewell.

If you want too [sic] believe, ok. If not that is ok. You will be sorry someday if you had to stay in jail with eights Negroes.” This quote proves my thesis because this quote is explaining how sorry she feels about the policemen making her tell a lie about the crime that the Scottsboro boys didn’t commit at all. This makes the reader think that justice means doing the right thing, such as fixing problems that people have started. In the book many blacks and whites march together around the country,“If politics and controversy make strange bedfellows, none were ever any stranger than those made by Scottsboro. In a time when institutionalized segregation was the norm across the land and Communism was practically illegal, marches of blacks and whites together took place around the country.

“I want you to understand that courage isn’t a man with a gun in his hand,” (Lee 112). This is a quote spoken from a courageous man who put himself in other people’s positions and did not believe he was superior to African Americans like many in that time period. Atticus Finch is a lawyer, and also the father of Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The finches live in a small town called Maycomb during 1933, also known as the Great Depression era. Throughout the book, the town faces many racial discrimination issues, especially when an African American man named Tom Robinson is falsely accused of rape of a white female.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a great American classic about the coming of age of Scout Finch. Through her and her friends, we learn about life in the 1930s in the Deep South, and most importantly, the trial of a innocent black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape. This trial tells stories of prejudice, unity, and mob mentality. However, one of the significant themes, don 't assume something about someone, truly related to me. Scout, Jem, and Dill 's assumptions about Boo Ridley was similar to my skewed assumptions about Mr. Cash.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch employs pathos and diction in his closing argument to the jury and the people of Maycomb in order to persuade them to see beyond their prejudice and free Tom Robinson. Atticus informs the jury about the evil assumptions that society makes about Negroes. Pathos is used to persuade the jury when Atticus says, “Some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men” (Lee 273). In saying this, Atticus tries to convince the audience and jury that everyone is capable of making mistakes, and differences in appearance does not mean that groups of people are superior to others.

This case depicted the extent of barbarous treatment of blacks. One of the main events in To Kill a Mockingbird is Atticus Finch’s case involving a black man, Tom Robinson, and a white female, Mayella Ewell. She was known for being part of one of the most disgusting families in town and accusing Mr. Robinson of raping her after she asked him inside the house to help her with a chore. Since she was white and Mr. Robinson was black, no matter what was said, the jury would take the white persons side of it due to the discrimination of blacks during that time. With Lee being the daughter of a well-known lawyer in the county it is evident that she was aware of the happenings of the Scottsboro Case enough to have been the influence of the Robinson Case in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling” (264). “You felt sorry for her?” This condescending remark Mr. Gilmer makes shows his fury and his supposed superiority that the majority of Maycomb felt towards black people. Just based entirely off of the color of Tom’s skin, they seem unable to accept or view the story from his angle. Emphasis on the word “you” is used in a derogatory manner that screams prejudice, and Mr. Gilmer seems incapable of seeing how a black man like Tom could possibly feel sorry for “her”, a white girl like Mayella. Because the social ladder is built based off of race, Tom immediately gets cast to the bottom without a second thought.

One more assumption that is made in this novel is that African Americans are to be treated as less than white men. Tom Robinson, for example, is proved guilty in his trial for being accused of raping Mayella Ewell just because he is a black man, even though the evidence clearly shows that he is innocent. In Atticus’s closing summation, he says, “You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. (204)” This quote is saying that black men themselves are not a problem, but that it is the whole human race that should not be trusted.

When the jury pronounce Tom guilty, Jem is exasperated and “his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulder jerked as if each ‘guilty’ was a separate stab between them,” (282). Even though “rape is capital offense in Alabama,” (293) meaning the prosecuted will be sentenced to death, the children could not believe the jury has sentenced a guiltless man to death. According to Atticus, it is a sad truth that an accused African-American has never won a court case and “when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins,” (295). Although it is a sad truth, Atticus believes