Character Analysis Of Tom Robinson In Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

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17 June 2014 The Hidden Meaning In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, Jean Louis “Scout” Finch takes the reader through a series of flashbacks of everything she experiences, from age six to ten, while living in a segregated Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Scout, the protagonist and narrator, spends her days playing with Jem, her brother who is ten, and Dill, a boy around the same age as Jem, who comes down from Meridian, Mississippi to Maycomb during the summer. To pass the time, the children come up with stories about Arthur “Boo” Radley, a man who lives in solidarity because of a trivial mistake he commits in his teenage years. Atticus, the children’s father, is the town lawyer and that particular summer, he is assigned the job of being a barrister for Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a poor “white trash” girl, Mayella Ewell. It is from this point forward that the reader can clearly see the two…show more content…
Before the entire trial begins, Tom Robinson is described as a hardworking man employed by Mr. Link Deas, who even said in court, “I just want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now. That boy’s worked for me for eight years an’ I ain’t had a speck o’trouble outa him. Not a speck” (Lee 222). When Mayella Ewell testifies against Tom Robinson, she makes it clear that he takes full advantage of her; albeit, Tom Robinson states the opposite, saying she grabs a hold of him first. Moreover, it is evident that the word of a black man would not even be considered by the all-white jury, and Tom Robinson has this weight of evil put onto his back, therefore, suggesting that Tom Robinson is a mockingbird. Although Atticus tries to keep an optimistic outlook for the trial he reveals, “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (Lee 276), and Tom’s identity changes from this point
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